What are you Baking the Week of September 25, 2022?

[Mike Nolan]

I need to make semolina bread soon, I used up most of what we had making croutons for soup.

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[cwcdesign]

I made the No Knead from KABC again with much more success this time. First, it helps if you actually read the ingredients - I had used AP when the recipe called for bread flour. Then I just mixed it with the dough whisk instead of the stand mixer - the mixer was quick, but more to clean up. I also wonder if it over mixed the dough. I also used regular yeast.

The dough rose and bubbled nicely by this morning. I shaped the dough and put it in the pan. It was cooler today and I set the timer for 40 minutes for the second proof - I gave it additional 10 minutes, put the lid on (no scoring) and put in in the oven for the minimum time. At 45 minutes, it was up to temp and golden. It definitely rose more, but it's not a high loaf - the texture and flavor are much better.

[BakerAunt]

On Sunday, I baked my Whole Wheat Sourdough Cheese Crackers.

I am also in the process of baking two pumpkin pies for my husband's cousins' reunion.

Earlier in the day, I premeasured ingredients for two pans of cinnamon rolls, which I will bake there for breakfast one morning, using my older bread machine.

[BakerAunt]

I just completed baking my second pumpkin pie. Ever since I began baking these pies in my Wolf oven, I have had a spot on the surface of each pie which is small but opens up as it cooks and bubbles. It's about the size of a dime. I never had this issue when baking the pies in a variety of other ovens. It's not the fan because I do not bake pumpkin pies with the convection setting. It happens near the end of the 10-minute initial bake at 425F. After that, I reduce the temperature to 350F for the remaining 11 minutes. My process is the same--parbaked crust and filling heated on the stove before it is put into the pie crust.

Any ideas what might be happening? It does not affect the pie in taste or texture, but I would prefer a top without the spot. Perhaps I should reduce the temperature for the initial 10 minutes from 425F to 400F?

[Mike Nolan]

Have you checked the accuracy of you oven's settings? (I do it with an infrared thermometer.)

If the oven runs hot, then reducing the temperature might help.

[aaronatthedoublef]

I made ciabatta dough an used it for pizza. Thumbs up from both Kate and Violet. I tried to take it out of the pan for the last of the bake and made an awful mess but that did not slow anyone down from eating it. It was definitely over-proofed which didn't help. I'll try again either next week or the week after.

CWC, I've had a number of really solid professional bakers tell me that I can use AP or bread flour interchangeably. I haven't used AP in a few decades at this point subbing in bread flour. But then again I know bakers who won't use KAB's bread flour to sub for Sir Galahad even though they are supposed to be from the same line. So who knows...

I need a good source on flour that will guide me through terms like "high extraction" and "strong" and the like.

[Mike Nolan]

There aren't precise standards for how terms like 'high extraction' and 'strong' impact our baking.

'High extraction generally means a higher percentage of bran and germ are included. Patent flour is virtually all endosperm and has an extraction rate of 72%, which means that from 100 pounds of wheat the miller gets about 72 pounds of patent flour.

Whole wheat flour is 100% extraction. The higher the extraction rate, the more flour the miller can sell. What they can't sell as flour generally gets sold for animal feed, at a much lower price.

It seems to me that flour that is separated into component streams in a roller mill and reconstituted according to the standard percentages of endosperm (around 83%), germ (around 3%) and bran (around 14%) in wheat has some differences from whole meal flour, such as what you would get from a stone mill where the milled wheat is never separated.

'Strong' refers to the gluten strength of the flour, which isn't quite synonymous with protein content. It depends on the type of wheat and the ratio of gliadin and glutenin in that wheat.

Other factors that come into play are the amount of starch damage and the alpha amylase level. (This is by no means a complete list, the more you learn about wheat the more you realize what a complex chemical environment it is.)

A lab report of flour will give more information, but home bakers never get that information. Better flour companies blend their flours so that it is more consistent from bag to bag throughout the year. A recurring theme on the BBGA forums is bakers noting that they changed brands of flour, or the mill changed what they're providing, how the new flour is performing differently and how the bakers are trying to compensate for that.

[aaronatthedoublef]

Thanks Mike. I appreciate that. And I get the mixing of different wheats and holding wheat back to try for consistency. I have a buddy who worked in IT for Pepsi and he used to talk about the huge vats of orange juice (I think Pepsi owns or owned Tropicana) to try and keep the taste consistent not just for a year but over 10 years.

When I was looking at Mark Bittman's cookbook he uses "hard" and "soft" to signify higher gluten flours like bread and higher or softer flours like cake (he does not mention pastry). I've only heard hard and soft in terms of wheat and never read it used like Mr. Bittman does.

And speaking of hard and soft wheat I like KAB's soft white wheat mostly for the flavor but it is crazy expensive here. I can buy a hard white wheat from Central Milling for less even with shipping. Is what give KAB's a mellower flavor the fact that it is white, not red or that it is soft and not hard like their red whole wheat?

[Mike Nolan]

I think the original use of strong may have come from 'hard' wheat. 'Hard' vs 'soft' wheat had to do with the berries themselves, hard red wheat berries are, well, harder than soft red wheat berries, which affects how you mill it as well as what the resulting flour is like. How well this translates into protein/gluten differences and thus baking differences is where things get fuzzy, because there are several major types of wheat (notably hard/soft, red/white and winter/spring), and that's before you get into things like durum and the heritage varieties like turkey wheat and legacy wheat ancestors like emmer.

There are USDA recognized wheat breeders in a number of states, and they're all producing varieties intended primarily for use in specific parts of their state.

Some of the presentations I've heard of from Nebraska's (now retired) wheat breeder were interesting, he was more concerned with growing conditions (temperature, moisture, insects and plant diseases) and yield than with what bakers did with the wheat. (In fact, when he gave me 5 pounds of triticale berries, which he also bred, he'd never tasted bread made with any triticale flour in it.)

One of the great successes in wheat breeding was the development of dwarf wheat species. Shorter stalks means less chance of the wheat getting blown over and being harder if not impossible to harvest. It also means more of the nutrition drawn from the soil goes into the wheat berries rather than into making straw, reducing the need for fertilizers. One presentation I saw from Nebraska's (now-retired) wheat breeder considered this almost as important in the struggle against world hunger as Norman Borlaug's work with breeding dwarf rice. As a result of his work with both grains, Borlaug received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970.

One of the more interesting presentations at last year's online International Bread Symposium was on how they're trying to develop an ultra-dwarf wheat variety that could be grown in space or on a Mars colony. They've got wheat that's only 18 inches tall now. BTW, did you know that bread isn't allowed in space because of the crumbs? Some years ago an astronaut snuck a corned beef sandwich on board, though.

[Mike Nolan]

We weren't all that impressed with the bread I made from the KAF white wheat flour I bought some years ago, but I bought some white wheat berries when I was at the Wheat Montana store several years ago, and I've been more impressed with it as a whole meal flour in certain breads.

I wouldn't recommend driving to Montana just to visit the store, but if you're in the Three Forks area, it is an interesting place, with a really great bakery! It's about 2 hours NW of the north gate at Yellowstone Park.

[Mike Nolan]

I did make two loaves of semolina bread last night, 1 1/2 of them went into the freezer.

[aaronatthedoublef]

I LOVED Wheat Montana. Cool place. But there was no way I could pack flour to bring home. I suppose I could order some. Again, it's hard to tell what is what and what will match (or improve on) what I'm using. I almost wish we had standard names and terms like the EU.

There is a nice, small mill about two hours from me but they no nothing about baking. They decided to start a mill after reading an ingredient list I think but they really do not know much about flour. Nice, but expensive.

I made my sourdough today. Really nice snap on the crust. One was shaped pretty well. The, not so much. They both need to be tighter. I need to make this more often and in larger volumes and start giving it away. I cut the time down from 2.5 days to 12 hours to tame the sour. It's a much milder taste. It's good to know I can make this either way.

The cut load is a little squished. Not sure if that was from lack of proofing (it definitely rose quite a bit) or it wasn't quite done cooling when I cut it.

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[Mike Nolan]

Shaping is one of those things that requires attention to each loaf, otherwise you can end up with a set of loaves that don't even look like they came from the same recipe. (But I still say shape is the hidden taste dimension of bread, and one that few bread books discuss.)

Your loaves look good to me. I don't see major problems comparing them, either. As to the cross-section, I can't tell if it got squished a bit while slicing and/or if you didn't let it cool and the starch gel long enough. A different slashing pattern might change the cross-section profile, but just because a loaf is asymmetric or not slashed dead center, that's not a problem, even at a bakery. There are a lot of bread shapes, like a tabatiere, that are very asymmetric.

I often lose patience waiting for loaves to cool. Besides, eating warm fresh bread is such a sensual experience, very different from eating a fully cooled loaf. (And reheating bread doesn't bring back the earlier experience, I'd rather just toast it and enjoy that different experience.)

Ginsberg has one rye bread that he recommends be wrapped in plastic and allowed to age for 48 hours before slicing. I think I'd have to make some other bread at the same time to keep from tearing into the rye loaf as it ages!

[Mike Nolan]

This video of baker Jimmy Griffin commenting on the slashing techniques of his students is interesting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7u_KiTP0BfQ

[chocomouse]

I made 2 loaves of Harvest Grains bread today.

My husband stopped at the Norwich KAF store today and got me a fifty-pound bag of Sir Galahad flour. It was $49.95, up from 34.95 six months ago! However, he got a discount (Guest Pass) even though he used my account number and name, so got 9.99 off.

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