Mike Nolan
Forum Replies Created
-
AuthorPosts
-
I wonder if when spinning pizza dough if you need to degas it first or if it just naturally degasses due to the spinning action? Not that I ever expect to spin pizza dough, I can't juggle, either. I wonder if my older son has tried spinning pizza dough, he's juggled for years and sometimes performs at Renaissance Fairs. (I asked him, he said 'not well'.)
As I recall, you're supposed to be able to get a dime between the bottom of the beater and the bowl.
Are you certain the lock lever isn't failing?
There appear to be two camps on deflating dough, most authors are solidly in one camp or the other, although it may depend on the specific recipe. Peter Reinhart has some recipes where he stresses deflating the dough fully and others where he recommends handling the dough carefully to avoid deflating it.
I've always deflated the dough as much as I can during shaping. I've tried a few recipes that stress gentle handling to avoid deflating the dough, those recipes haven't been that successful for me.
The physics of dough bubbles is interesting. There are a number of bread articles out there that say bubbles are only formed by the sheer action of mixing and kneading, and that the yeast doesn't create additional bubbles during bulk or final proof, citing Boyle's Law. According to this theory, the gas generated by yeast increases the size of existing bubbles, but doesn't create any new ones. (Chemical leavening is a different matter, the chemical reaction of an acid with a base does create bubbles.)
I've never figured out how this reconciles with no-knead recipes, though. It does seem to explain why intensive mixing produces a fine grain texture, because you get lot of little bubbles rather than fewer but bigger ones.
Deflating dough doesn't eliminate bubbles, according to these same sources, it just makes them smaller again.
BTW, the 'throw the dough on the counter 600 times' method (see Simon, the sexy French baker does create sheer action--LOTS of it! And it produces dough unlike any I've made using any other methods, it is just a lot of work to do it.
I honestly don't know if whole wheat flour is always unbleached. I can't say I've ever seen a package that indicated it was bleached, but I haven't really looked, either.
The fineness to which flour is milled is a separate factor, not something easily discerned from the package in the USA. (European flours are often labeled in ways that make this a bit easier to tell.)
There's a 'sweet limpa' recipe in the Ginsberg book, but I haven't tried it yet. It is a 100% rye recipe and uses molasses at 17.5% of flour weight, which is about twice as much molasses per flour weight as the McCall's recipe, so I would expect it to be both sweeter and denser.
-
This reply was modified 6 years ago by
Mike Nolan.
Two days after having the biggest snowfall of the season (5-6 inches), we're supposed to hit the mid-70's this afternoon, so I'm doing burgers on the outdoor grill tonight.
Our grill is about 24 years old and is starting to show signs of age, the knob for the left set of burners won't turn (it was sticky last fall.) I'm not sure I've got the skills and tools to replace the control and I don't know if the place we bought it from is even doing repairs any more. It is wearing out in other places and probably should have new burners as well.
Right now spending money on a new grill isn't in the plans, though I did do some shopping around last fall to see what's out there. Our current grill has a separate rotisserie burner at the back, and I like using that for things like chickens and turkeys. I've done gyros meat on it a few times, too. Most of the grills don't have that feature, though Weber has an add-on kit.
If I was buying a new grill, I'd probably look for one that has better facilities for smoking meats, too.
I am making burger and hot dog buns today, using Jeffrey Hamelman's 'soft butter rolls' recipe. The hot dog buns will have poppy seeds on them, the burger buns will have sesame seeds on them.
Your store-brand whole wheat flour will depend on what wheat blend was used to produce it, in general King Arthur flours tend to be a bit higher in protein content than other brands, that's probably true for their whole wheat products as well.
I haven't looked at a bag of whole wheat flour in quite a while, are they always unbleached?
Probably depends on the mill. On modern roller mills making whole wheat flour is actually extra work, because they have to reblend the endosperm, bran and germ back to the original proportions. On an old-fashioned grist mill, whole wheat flour is basically what you get.
We had spaghetti with meat and mushroom sauce, and cheese toast.
We had BLT's tonight.
I had my doubts about that seller as well. If the package is still sealed it should last 3-4 years, unless it has been exposed to high temperatures. Yeast dies at about 135 degrees and that's really HOT water, hot enough to damage your skin and hotter than most people set their water heater.
FWIW, walmart.com appears to have KAF bread flour, two 5-pound bags for $7.15 plus shipping, and if you order $35, shipping is free. May not be available everywhere, I suppose.
There's a glitch in WordPress or BBPress that occurs when the number of posts in a thread exactly equals the number per page, which I currently have set at 75 I'm not sure if it occur at further multiples, we don't have many threads that get to 150 posts.
When a thread goes over the page size, you have to select the page number from the link at the top of the thread, otherwise it just shows you the page with the most recent post.
I'm tempted to set the page size back to the default of 25, I think they load faster that way.
I hope all this baking keeps up, but I"m not sure it will. I was looking on Amazon and seeing 1 pound packages of yeast for prices up to $36. Not paying that!
I do nearly all my baking free-form, unless you're making a huge boule (like a 3-4 pound miche), it is difficult to get more than about 3 1/2 inches of height. For tall loaves you really need a bread pan to force the dough to rise up rather than spread out.
I don't have a banneton, but the reports are that it does help increase height, you just have to be delicate when turning the dough out of the banneton to bake it so you don't lose the shape.
A lot of my loaves are about 5 inches wide and about 3 1/2 inches high, and usually 10-12 inches long. We think that's a good cross-section size for sandwiches.
-
This reply was modified 6 years ago by
-
AuthorPosts
