Bread

I agree, I am keeping my yeast alive in my sourdough starter.

;-)

Difficult to get hold of apparently. Asked for one of these for my birthday. Happy birthday to me!!

Prepped and ready for use this afternoon!!

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Nice

It took a few gods for my bannetons to season with flour and stop sticking. So if it doesn’t work first time persevere

Better start praying

What’s the best way to improve oven spring? My last couple of loaves haven’t risen when in the oven as much as I would like, it as much as the loaves I was making in my dutchpot.
Current loaves are proving in fridge overnight and then sitting out for an hour or so whilst the oven heats up, and are then baked on a pizza stone with ice cubes in oven to provide some steam.
But still not getting a nice tear.

Ha, serves me right(/write) for trying to type while sweating on turbo trainer.

Cook from chilled tends to give better oven spring

Active starter and a getting the scoring right also help. I have also found lower hydration gives me better lift.

Oven at maximum temp too and

The problem was more how I put it in. Need to concentrate more on making a ball with no creases. Happy with the overall shape and it came out clean. Tasting tomorrow.

Interior of my flattish/lacking oven spring loaf, mix of white, wholemeal and rye.
Currently investigating ways of creating more steam in my oven to get that spring.

Still tastes good, and has many holes.

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Both wholemeal and rye will hinder that oven spring pop. Looks like you have quite a bit in? I find that I can add about 15-20% einkorn or rye and still get decent pop, but any more and it'll struggle.

Also make sure your loaves aren't over-proofed. I realised the other week that I've baked mine over-proofed the whole time. Cut back on it and the oven spring got much better

Made a Flamiche over the weekend, but made it deep-dish, with a Levain-Levure method crust.
(essentially based on the Bertinet recipe- but vegan quiche filling using silken tofu). Was a bit ugly for photos but came out great.
Had a bunch of dough and veg filling so made a quick Fougasse where I folded in the remnant onion/spinach/ pea mixture and this was even better.
Also tried to make Chocolatine per the Bruno Albouze method but had a bit of butter seepage out, which was very disappointing- have frozen the uncooked remaining dough for that, hopefully it was a case off too hot butter.
(The gianduja created were F* amazing and I have about 100g of the stuff left).

I normally put water into the oven to try and create a crust (along with sugar in the recipe). Hotheadedness crust goes soft are a short while. How are people storing bread once it is ready to eat. We put in a plastic bag which I’m thinking might be wrong!!

gianduja

Recipe please? I want to leave for Brussels just thinking about them.

The plastic bag will contribute to the softening of the crust- its impermeable, so the evaporation of the remnant water in the bread will soften the crust.
I've found paper bags to be a good solution, or just a good bread bin.
Some softening is inevitable, however, and some just store it cut side down on a counter.

Roast some nuts (200g total). De skin using towel whilst hot
200g Sugar into dry pan- make dry caramel.
Add 10g butter, 3g salt, and the nuts to the caramel.
Combine and let cool and set on parchment/silicone.
Blender/ Food processor- put to highest setting. (we have the nutrininja blender and its great).
Break the caramel/nut mixture (Praline) into smaller pieces and put into running blender.
Add 200g of chocolate not quite melted (1 min 30s in microwave at high, in 30s intervals) until well combined and beautiful.
Put into freezer to set.

Its about 15mins work! So worth it.

Cut side down on a wooden cutting board. A sourdough loaf is good for 4-5 days and the flavour keeps improving I think. Doubt this works as well with modern breads from the shop though

I’m working from a Dan lepard recipe which is 60%white 40% wholemeal/rye

So in the loaf above I went 300g white 150g wholemeal 50g rye, leaven and water were a bit more than I’d normally use in a white loaf.

May dial down the wholemeal and rye next time, as you suggest. This is the first white/wholemeal mix I’ve done as I mistaken thought my missus 8grain was wholemeal, but it’s white..

Don’t think I’m overproofing as they are getting the long slow prove overnight in the fridge. Think one of my mistakes is not baking from cold, and letting it warm up to room temp as the oven heats.

Just brought an oven thermometer so I can know what the temp is inside the oven, which hopefully should improve all of my baking..

Just crank your oven to full heat for the first twenty minutes and a load of ice cubes or boiling water in the tray below for steam. After 20 mins all the springing will have occurred so you can reduce the temp.

I'd say that's a very decent spring for that ratio!

Was gonna say, looks good with that mix of flours!

Thanks for the feedback guys.
As it’s my first white/wholemeal mix, wasn’t sure what I should be looking for.
Will roll back the wholemeal/rye amounts and see how the next one goes..

Nice second go at bread - much more rise than the first one.

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Wings because I launched it into the side of the pan, but it turned out alright.

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Looks good!

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I’d love those crunchy bits!