Mike Nolan
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We had fish with broccoli tonight.
I think the reason is because semolina isn't ground as finely. The more finely you grind a flour, the less it weighs per cup, cake flour being a good example. (Powdered sugar is another good example, it is much lighter per cup than granulated sugar.)
A cup of durum wheat berries is 192 grams, other hard wheat berries are about the same, soft wheat berries are a bit lighter, 168 grams per cup.
There are many good ways to create a starter, some ways, like the pineapple juice method, may succeed where others fail. I guess it's somewhat dependent on what micro-organisms are in your environment. I've created a total of 3 wheat-based starters using 2 different methods and one rye-based starter (with a second one under way), all of them worked, some much faster than others. The first rye starter was ready in about a week, for example.
I stopped maintaining the wheat-based ones because my wife was having problems with the breads I was making, too sour for her, I think. One of these days I'm going to try a variant on Chad Robertson's method, as detailed in the Tartine cookbooks, adapting the feeding schedule so it doesn't require throwing out 95% of your starter frequently. His method is supposed to produce a starter that generates less lactic acid.
Hamelman's 'Soft Butter Rolls' recipe made excellent burger and hot dog buns, I'll make these again. The poppy seeds didn't stick on as well as I would have liked, I tried a little diluted honey to get them to stick, maybe next time I'll use a little egg white. I've used a honey-and-milk solution a few times, that seemed to work fairly well, too.
I started a new rye starter today, using Ginsberg's instructions again.
I remember when I was testing Peter's starter instructions for ABED, it took FOREVER before I saw any signs of activity. However, that was in December/January and it was usually fairly cold in the kitchen. After three weeks, I was about ready to give up and start over again, but Peter advised me to just give it another few days, and it started to bubble during that time.
Deb Wink's 'pineapple juice' approach is pretty reliable. She's an expert in micro-organisms who decided to put her training to use in the kitchen. It has the advantage of creating a low pH environment faster, thus discouraging some of the less desirable bacteria from getting a foothold in your starter. I'm hoping that after the world re-opens they can reschedule her sourdough class in a place and time I can attend, I was really looking forward to it.
My guess is both the whites and the yolks would heat up to the point where the egg explodes, the yolks have their own separate membrane which is why they'll explode even if the egg is cracked into a dish but the yolk isn't broken.
Eggs without a yolk are very rare, and they never make it to the grocery store these days due to automated candling processes, otherwise someone could test this.
I started a big batch of sauerkraut in my new 4 gallon crock on Sunday, I've got between 11 and 12 pounds of cabbage in it, as it compresses down I plan to add more cabbage in the next day or two. It started out about 3/4 full, by this morning it was below half full. I've got around 30 pounds of cabbage to work with, I may wind up starting another batch in the 1 gallon crock just to use more of it up.
I'm making a batch of bagels today, using 75% bread flour and 25% first clear flour. Next batch I may throw in some triticale.
I'm also making the box brownie mix I got out a week ago. I figure the oven's already hot, so why not do them now?
French law is pretty specific about what bakers can sell as 'French bread'. It must be a lean dough, ie, the only ingredients are flour, water, salt and yeast or levain. (A little dough conditioner is allowed to compensate for certain flour conditions, but the list of conditioners allowed is short. Prof. Calvel's book goes into the history of dough conditioners in France and how they impact the quality of the bread.)
Every recipe I've seen for Vienna bread is an enriched dough, usually with egg and oil/butter in it, and often a little sugar. As a result, a Vienna bread generally has a much longer shelf life than a French baguette, which goes stale in a day. That's why there are so many French recipes for using up old bread.
We had artichokes for supper, a bit light on carbs but delicious.
One possibility is that the beater is is too close to the bowl, it won't lock if it isn't all the way down. See if it locks without a beater in place. If so, you need to do the height adjustment stuff.
Sounds like you need a slightly bigger bread pan. Otherwise, you may need to firm the dough up a bit, either by lowering the hydration or with some stretch-and-folds.
When I make the Stella Parks recipe, I use an 8 inch bread pan and it rises to maybe 3/4 of an inch above the top of the pan before it goes into the oven.
The amount of 'old dough' added to a new batch varies a lot.
I've seen a number of articles that say the old dough makes up anywhere from 10% to 1/3 of the new batch.
But I've also seen videos where the amount of 'old dough' being added to a large commercial mixer was more like a few cups of dough, which I think would be way below 10% of the resulting batch.
My guess is the less old dough you inoculate with, the longer you have to give it to percolate. That's the classic baker's tradeoff, trading time for flavor.
As to converting to baker's percentages, remember the total new flour weight becomes 100%. The old dough is treated like adding yeast, even though there is technically flour and water in the 'old dough', but it isn't part of the 100%, just like salt or yeast wouldn't be in a straight dough formula. Flax meal and chickpea flour would (IMHO) be part of the flour weight.
It's taken a while for me to get my head around old dough formulas, but basically the old dough will have the same hydration percentage as the current batch, so both the water and the flour in the old dough can be ignored when computing hydration, as you're adding in something that's at the same hydration level as your dough.
So, your formula would look something like this:
Cake Flour or TP00 1.5 pounds
WWW Flour 1 pound
flax meal .25 pound
chickpea flour .25 poundThat gives you 3 pounds of flour, so that's your 100%.
To that you add 2 pounds of water, giving you a hydration level of 67%.
You also (presumably) have salt and old dough to add in, both as a percentage of the flour weight. How much old dough you use is probably something you'll need to experiment with. Oh dear, more excuses to make pizza! But you need to work backwards, if you want to add 1 pound of old dough to your next batch and have 5 pounds of dough to bake with, you need to make 6 pounds of dough, which would be 5 pounds of new ingredients and 1 pound of old dough. Does that help?
I don't really care for that thick outer edge, either. But we like REALLY thin crust pizza, almost like a cracker crust, that's probably why we like lavash pizza so much.
I've tried the 'throw the dough against the counter' method a few times, it does create a little flour dust, but not too bad, I've actually had my mixer throw out more flour.
If you go to this site you'll find several pictures of me throwing bread dough while getting an Alexander Technique lesson (to improve my mechanics without stressing my body):
Alexander Technique -
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