What are you Baking the Week of February 19, 2023?

[BakerAunt]

We were running out of bread, so on Friday I baked two loaves of my Buttermilk, Whole Wheat, and Grape Nuts Bread, which is probably my husband's favorite. I cut the salt a bit more and used a 1/2 cup more whole grain flour. The house was cool, so the first rise took 90 minutes, and the second about 75 minutes.

While the dough was rising, I baked my Oatcake recipe. Instead of circles, I cut them into small hearts, which resulted in 29 heart-shaped cookies and one leftover blob, whereas I usually get about 16. I baked them for 20 minutes instead of the usual 25 minutes.

[aaronatthedoublef]

Back to challah. I made enough dough for six this week and realized that to get to 12, to paraphrase "Jaws", I'm gonna need a bigger bowl!

I can bake at least eight at one time and maybe 12 if I use full sheets instead of half. I'm also working with my temple to give them away. I tried a couple new braiding techniques and I'm still doing four strands.

I have the date wrong on the baked challahs. And I really do need to start the dough on Thursday night instead of early Friday morning.

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[Mike Nolan]

They look like they might have been over-proofed a little, but the braiding looks good.

[BakerAunt]

I agree that the braiding looks good.

[Joan Simpson]

Looks good Aaron!

[aaronatthedoublef]

Thanks everyone.

Mike, I'm not sure how to tell if they're over proofed or what to do about it if they are.

I made some regular sandwich bread and may have over-proofed it as well. I increased the hydration from 70 to 75%. The dough was too soft to score which I've never seen before.

I did get a good oven spring and the crumb is a little more open than usual which is what I wanted. It's lighter and softer.

[skeptic7]

Aaron; The Challah looks wonderful. I'm glad that your temple is helping you. I had a friend who tried to follow an old tradition and make two braids on Friday and then found that was way too much bread.
I made cranberry scones and a flatbread with cheese on top. Like a pizza only no tomato sauce. I hope to make curry butternut squash soup this afternoon and wanted the bread to go with it.
BakerAunt; the oatcakes sound good. Are they like a cracker or a cookie?

[Mike Nolan]

Not much you can do in terms of recovery once they're overproofed, my usual sign of that is when they come out flatter than normal. A while back I got distracted by something when I had some loaves in final rise and I completely forgot about them; they went into the oven about an hour late. They started to collapse as I was moving them into the oven and they looked a lot like flatbreads by the time they came out.

There's kind of a narrow window between under-proofed and over-proofed, and unless you can control all the factors, like temperature and humidity, dough won't rise at the same rate every time, so you have to just kind of learn to anticipate when it's ready for the oven.

The finger-poke method is the usual test for final proof, and the type of dough, including hydration level, is a big factor in how it should respond. Bagels don't look or feel the same as challah, for example.

[Mike Nolan]

Some days when I go to slash my loaves they slash beautifully, other days the knife or lame just seems to stick.

[aaronatthedoublef]

Thanks Mike. I definitely neglected the challah after braiding and they flattened out during baking. You can see it inside. I also put two half sheets with two loaves a piece in the oven. I usually only do one pan at a time so I may need to raise the oven temp some to account for this.

Two loaves of challah is a lot but not in my house, even with Sam at school. 😉 And Violet will not even try it.

I did track down why there 12 loaves of challah comes from. It's in Leviticus. I know the two challah tradition. I'll find where that comes from. For a long time most challah recipes were big because batches were supposed to be at least five pounds. My first recipe I followed called for seven cups of flour and easily overflowed my mixer. Same thing happened to my mom.

[BakerAunt]

Over proofed dough can sometimes be punched down and allowed to rise another time (not as long), but as Mike notes, it will not rise as high. I have done this with a set of loaves when we did not get back from a walk in time.

I usually get my lame wet when slashing breads. It seems to help.

Skeptic--I will post the oat cake recipe. They do require Bob's Red Mill Scottish oatmeal, which has a different texture from rolled or steel-cut oats. I adapted the recipe from one on the bag to avoid the butter. These are only faintly sweet, and people biting into one the first time usually expect more sweet. They are somewhat like a cracker. They would do well with cheese, and I also like a smear of jam on them, but plain is fine as well.

[Mike Nolan]

I wonder if the tradition for large batches of challah comes from the necessity for community ovens?

[Mike Nolan]

I've always been a bit skeptical of 'the yeast stops working or runs out of sugar' claims.

Some years ago I took a baguette recipe (probably Reinhart's pain de campagne) and I let it rise for an hour, get punched down, rise again, etc. After 6 hours, it was still rising just fine, so I shaped and baked it. It was pretty good, nice crumb.

[aaronatthedoublef]

BA, next time I will try to wet may lame, especially if it isn't working. And it was a brand, new blade.

So, challah originated as a separation of dough to be sacrificed. The batch of dough, according to modern rules, needs to be five pounds to be kosher.

A rabbi gave me an unstructured dump of info I am still working through and this is just the tip of the iceberg. I think I could easily write a PhD thesis on challah.

[Mike Nolan]

I would not be surprised if someone has already written a PhD thesis on challah.

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