[Mike Nolan]

When our younger son moved to California to work for YouTube, one of the first things he bought for his apartment was a stand mixer. I wonder how much he uses it, though, because YouTube provides breakfast, lunch and dinner from Monday morning through Friday noon, so he only has to deal with cooking for himself for at most 7 meals a week, and there's a mall with a large food court a few blocks away.

While he was still living with us he got pretty good at making the KAF stuffed baguettes recipe, and he was experimenting with several cookie recipes.

[Mike Nolan]

Most of the interest in 'Just Bread' is a renewed interest in artisan bakeries, especially in less expensive but still artisan quality breads.

I agree that KAF's recipe is probably not one a new baker could attempt, because producing and maintaining a sourdough starter is a lifestyle choice.

I'm taking a sourdough class in TX next month, one of the teachers is Deb Wink. Long time KAF BC readers may remember her recommending using pineapple juice to get a starter going.

[Mike Nolan]

Not sure if I'll make the recipe, but I did order the moon cake mold! I've had mung bean cakes at Asian restaurants, not sure if I've had one that was a combination of mung bean and red bean paste, though.

[Mike Nolan]

I wonder what percentage of younger households have a mixer or a food processor? The bread machine trend is past, these days the instant pot is in, though.

No-knead recipes (which I think are somewhat mis-named, they're really 'not-much-kneading' recipes) give people who don't want to spend 10-15 minutes kneading bread a way to make something that probably tastes a bit better than the mass-market factory-produced breads.

BTW, the New York Times had an interesting article on the 'just bread' trend, which King Arthur Flour is part of. There's been an interesting discussion of that on the BBGA forum, but I think any publicity for good breads is a positive thing, whether they're made at home or bought at a local (artisan) bakery.

[Mike Nolan]

Dinner tonight was whatever we had available that sounded good. I had some bread and cheese, and some peas, and I may have some other leftovers.

[Mike Nolan]

My 40 pound box of chicken backs came in today, so I started a 12 quart pot of chicken stock with about 5 pounds of backs and bagged the rest up in 3-4 pound bags that went in the freezer for future batches. I was going to make something for supper once the stock got going, but a client had a computer problem and I wound up spending several hours on it.

[Mike Nolan]

There are some mug cake recipes that are suppose to be more upscale, but I've never been impressed with the technique either.

[Mike Nolan]

It turns out the professor we got the triticale from is on the road, so he didn't get any of the test bread. I guess I'll just have to make more when he gets back. 🙂

[Mike Nolan]

Is the clay baker the one that you would soak in water then put the baker and the dough in a cold oven? I can see how that would generate a lot more steam than it appeared I got from my Dutch oven test.

I wonder if adding a little water to the Dutch oven to get things kick-started would help? Maybe spraying the top of the loaf just before putting the lid on?

I'm willing to try the Dutch oven method again now that I've come up a fairly safe way to put a loaf in a hot pan. Mine is a round Dutch oven, and boules aren't our favorite bread shape, but other than that, the method is one a lot of people like.

BTW, although King Arthur may not be carrying the oversize cookie spatula, it looks like it was made by Fox Run and is available on Amazon:
Cookie Spatula

[Mike Nolan]

Supper tonight is bread and cheese, to use up one of the test loaves from yesterday (the Dutch oven one) and the baguettes I made today (some with triticale.) I'll post more on that in another thread later this evening after I've uploaded some photos.

[Mike Nolan]

Thanks for posting, Eric, and welcome to MNK.

The Dutch oven pan was preheated at 450 for probably somewhere between 30 and 40 minutes. I didn't show the bottoms of any of the loaves, the one in the Dutch oven was the only one that was starting to show signs of scorching on the bottom, in part because the only way I can fit my Dutch oven pan in my oven is on the bottom shelf. Adding a pan to insulate it from the lower element a bit (yes, it is an electric oven) might help. I've got a couple of recipes that I have to double-pan to keep the bottoms from getting scorched before the top gets done.

All of the loaves suffered from being a little under-baked in the center, somewhat intentionally, because I pulled them all at the point where the top was showing a little dark brown. They probably needed another 5 minutes to be fully baked in the center, and that would have affected how dark they got, but it might also have made it harder to see the impact of the steam method. Lesson learned: Do some pre-tests before the production test. (My research methods prof would zing me for that, pre-testing your instrument was something he emphasized over and over.)

I will try the Dutch oven idea again, but for now my steam tube is working reasonably well. I did some baguettes with it today to test some triticale flour, I'll be doing more triticale tests over the next few weeks. (First lesson learned from triticale: It gets dark faster and can get scorched quickly.)

I did put the loaves back in the oven last night to get them a little more baked. The only complaint my wife got about the bread today was, "What, no butter?"

[Mike Nolan]

The loaves started out at 12 ounces and finished at around 11 ounces. I didn't weight them just before they went into the oven.

I did notice that the 51 ounces of pate fermentee lost about 2 ounces in the refrigerator overnight.

[Mike Nolan]

Today I'm doing a test with some triticale. I"m making the Pain de Campagne recipe (again!), but only two batches of it this time, one using the amount of whole wheat flour called for in Peter's recipe and the other using triticale flour instead of the whole wheat flour. I'll be making baguettes from both batches of dough.

[Mike Nolan]

I just finished editing the post, I think most of your questions are answered now. (BBPress only lets you add 4 photos at a time, so it was visible before I could add most of my comments.)

[Mike Nolan]

Steam Test Photos

Well, the steam test took about 12 hours, but I learned quite a lot, not all of it about steaming bread. 🙂

Here's a group photo of the 8 loaves I baked, followed by a shot of each one of them, with comments. The group shot shows them in order left to right, back to front.

Each of the loaves is 12 ounces of Pain de Campagne from the Bread Baker's Apprentice. The boules were just under 4 inches in diameter after shaping and 5 to 5 1/2 inches in diameter after baking.

Here's the 'control', a loaf made with no steam. The surface is relatively smooth.

This test had a pan of water in the oven during the pre-heat cycle, removed at the 10 minute mark.

For this test I sprayed the side walls 3 times during the first 3 minutes of baking. This is the method I've been using for the past several years.

This test had a cast iron skillet in the oven during preheat, and I added a cup or so of boiling water when the loaf went in the oven. The pan came out at the 10 minute mark.

This is the first test with my steam tube setup, I put in 20 CCs of water.

This is the second test with my steam tube, I put in a total of 40 CCs of water in two bursts about 2 minutes apart.

This is the third test with my steam tube, I put in a total of 60 CCs of water in three bursts about 2 minutes apart. All of the water had evaporated by the 10 minute mark.

This test was done in a round Dutch Oven, with the lid on for the first 15 minutes.

What did I learn?

Looking at the 8 loaves, the ones I liked best were 3 (side walls), 4 (boiling water) and 7 (steam tube, 3 shots of steam.) I think the overall winner is the steam tube setup with 3 shots of steam, but the boiling water one is a surprisingly close second, I think that's the method I'd recommend most people use. Although a lot of the steam goes out the open oven door, apparently there's enough of it to do a decent job.

I find pouring boiling water from a tea kettle is far easier than other methods I've used, though I did see an interesting suggestion that you use a wine bottle. It accomplishes much the same thing, giving you more control over the process while keeping your hand away from the blast of steam.

The interior shots aren't all that interesting, there really wasn't a lot of difference between them. They were all a bit underdone, I should probably have done a pre-test to establish the total baking time for this size loaf.

I have to say I wasn't all that impressed with the dutch oven one. It probably got the most oven rise, but the surface wasn't nearly as dimpled as the others, it looked a lot like the 'no steam' loaf except for the way the oven rise pretty much filled in the cuts. A lot of people like this method, I may have to try it again.

I did discover a relatively easy and safe way to put the loaf in a Dutch Oven pan. I have a 'cookie spatula' that I got from King Arthur Flour a while back, though I don't think they sell it any more. It is a large offset spatula that is about 6 1/2 inches wide, so I just put it under the parchment the dough was shaped on and lowered it into my Dutch Oven without my hands getting even close to the hot pan.

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