What are You Baking the Week of April 19, 2020?

[aaronatthedoublef]

Thanks BA. I autolyzed the water and flour for 2.5 hours. Then added all the dry ingredients and ran the food processor for about 75 seconds. Then added the water and oil through the chute, as you said. Not sure what I am missing and the bread is light and tastes good and we haven't missed store-bought sandwich bread.

Here is an interesting recipe for almost sourdough bread. It's almost a recipe - no specific amounts just making dough by feel but it uses what might otherwise be wasted starter.

[Mike Nolan]

I've always found it odd that home sourdough instructions nearly always recommend throwing away half of your starter at every feeding or using it for something other than bread, commercial bakeries do not do that (because they couldn't afford to!) They feed their starters a few hours before they plan to start another batch of dough, then take the half they would have thrown away and use it to inoculate a day's worth of dough, and the starter is at its most active point by then, too.

Maybe it's just because most home bakers don't bake bread every day, like a bakery does?

[BakerAunt]

The starter recipe I used avoided the "throw away" or discard by refrigerating the starter, then directing to let it come to room temperature (bubble), stir, take out what is needed, then feed. The issue with these directions is that unless the starter is being fed frequently, it won't have enough oomph without some yeast. I find it better, if I want to bake bread with it (even with a bit of yeast), to time the bread making so that it is the day after I've done my sourdough crackers and fed the starter.

The recipes that came with the starter specified an overnight sponge that mixed some of the starter with flour and water.

So, until I started reading up on sourdough, I'd never heard of "discard."

[Joan Simpson]

Welcome Kimbob!

Mike I don't throw away my starter and it's always worked well for me,too wasteful to throw it out.

[aaronatthedoublef]

Baking bread every day and razor thin margins drive a lot of behaviors at bakeries. The kitchens I've worked in did not throw away anything. My boss in Seattle could always squeeze out at least one more whatever we were making. Her bowls usually looked like nothing had been in them. And if it wasn't saleable we put it our for samples. Home bakers are less concerned with margins and controlling costs - even us here who are always watching the price of supplies and looking for bargains.

With bread it seems like it takes so long but the mixing, kneading, and shaping are actually pretty quick. If you can refrigerate of freeze it your bread before, during, or after proofing it makes it easier. But many don't think that way - they think you have to do everything at once and hang around while it's happening. Also I know lots of people afraid of baking and even more afraid of yeast baking. So they make bread less often I think.

[skeptic7]

There is an article from NPR about failed Sourdough starters. Its amusing

https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/04/22/841443442/so-your-sourdough-starter-failed-thats-ok-science-needs-it

[Mike Nolan]

The links in the story to their ongoing research look pretty promising, too. I forwarded the link on to Deb Wink and posted it on the BBGA forum.

[skeptic7]

Aaron, Thanks for the link. I like the almost recipes for sourdough bread found at that website. I wish I was around when the bread came out of the oven.

[S_Wirth]

Debra Wink was Macy on the old BC...some here may remember her by that name. Many of Macy's recipes got posted here. Just enter Macy in the Search box on the main page and scroll a ways down and you can find many of them.

Her pineapple juice sourdough starter can be found here:

Sourdough Starter by macy

• This reply was modified 4 years ago by S_Wirth.

[Joan Simpson]

Aaron the link you shared sure has some good looking recipes of all kinds,thanks.

[Mike Nolan]

Today I am finishing the Kassel rye I started on Wednesday, the sponge wasn't responding yesterday so I had to fiddle with it and give it another day to ferment. I should have a full report in the Rye Project thread later today.

[BakerAunt]

On Friday, I baked Ginger Pumpkin Bread, a yeasted, six-braid bread from the KAF site. I’ve baked it once before and substituted in 2 cups of white whole wheat flour. This time I increased that to 2 ½ cups. I used 1 ½ cups bread flour and ½ cup of high-gluten flour to stretch my bread flour. I added 1/3 cup special dry milk and ¼ cup flax meal. I reduced the salt from 1 ½ to 1 ¼ tsp. I increased the diced ginger to ½ cup and used golden raisins. I replaced the butter with 4 Tbs. canola oil. I use my own spice mixture of 1 ½ tsp. cinnamon, ½ tsp. ginger, and ½ tsp. freshly ground nutmeg. The recipe calls for 1 Tbs. of special gold yeast. I reduced that to 2 ¾ tsp. I warmed the pumpkin puree with the sugar, then proofed the yeast. I mixed in the eggs, then put that into the Zo bread machine bucket, then the flour. I held back the raisins and the minced ginger until near the end of the kneading cycle when the machine beeps. I let it rise in an oiled 4-qt. bucket with snap lid.

I have the KAF baking mat with the braiding instructions. I managed to do the braid on my second try. It helps to write the numbers and put them at the top. The second rise was 55 minutes. I brushed with an egg (did not add water, as I want to use the rest of the egg wash for another recipe). I baked it on the third rack up in my oven. I probably should have used the second rack up, which is my usual rack for loaf pan breads, because it was not done in 30 minutes. I needed to bake it almost 15 minutes longer to get it to 193F. I tented it with foil after 30 minutes because it was starting to overbrown. It’s cooling on a rack now. It’s a lovely looking loaf. I look forward to cutting it tomorrow.

• This reply was modified 4 years ago by BakerAunt.

[BakerAunt]

Aurgh! my post just disappeared after I edited it!

[Mike Nolan]

Here's an off-the-wall suggestion for keeping your posts from being marked as spam by Akismet. Instead of using fraction characters like ½, type them out as 1/2.

I'd ask the Akismet people about it, but their customer response is horrible. If there was a decent competing anti-spam product for WP, I'd switch in a heartbeat.

[BakerAunt]

Thanks Mike. I write my baking comments in my baking log, then copy and paste here. It was ok initially, but then I noticed that I hadn't separated the paragraphs, and so I edited to do so, and that landed me in the spam file.

I'll try to do the fractions here as you suggest. MS Word automatically converts them to the other form, so I will have to change them when I post.

[Author]

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