Bread

more ears than my usernamesake

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Sour dough discard crackers. Just discovered these so easy fun and tasty. Im currently hooked on poppy seed, cumin and a bit of smoked paprika in the mix.

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Also these guys. Was a bit keen to get them in to the lower oven and they got dented.

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These look great! I've been meaning to make some hot cross buns for a while and this is serious motivation.

Those look amazing

Thanks. Surprising the first batch, in which I accidentally included 1.5tsp of coriander also tasted ok! Note to self: read the label on the spice jar.

I want to try doing a brioche X hot cross buns mashup this week with more eggs and adding the butter cold.

That crust looks amazing! What temp/time did you bake at? I don’t have a dutch oven/pyrex bowl big enough for a loaf so been relying on water for steam and using high oven temp but can’t seem to get golden crust and cooked middle, so tend to have darker loaves. Not to the point they are spoilt but would love to keep the crust on the golden side! Maybe a bit lower and slower?

I just whack the top oven up as high as it will go, I think it can reach about 250 on a good day. Then a further 20 at about 180. Cook in a casserole pot and they don't have too much colour after 20 minutes. I used 5g of malted flour which probably contributes towards the colour.

Vanessa Kimbell's Sourdough School book is v. confusing regarding water.

After using 70% of the total during the initial mixing, it's very vague about what to do with the rest. The section on salt says to add the salt followed by 25g water, but then simply says 'This is now ready for bulk fermentation". Absolutely no mention of what to do with the remaining 195g I have left.

There's a column on eau de bassinage but the way it's formatted doesn't appear to have any relevance to the above, as if it's an alternative technique. That mentions adding water incrementally followed by the salt, which obviously makes no sense if I've already added it first.

It's like it hasn't been proof read.

See page 98. After autolyse add retained water in 25g increments. Until you have about 50g left use some of that final bit to help incorporate the salt and the last bit for wetting bands for stretch and fold.

The technique works but I just cannot get the full hydration breads to not be a slop.

This is the situation I find myself in. I made a loaf which turned out OK but was still very sloppy. This was 70% hydration so at the lower end of the scale. Anymore water and I’d have had a soup.

Thanks. 98 is what I was referring to, there's no mention of adding the water incrementally in those steps top left of the page. Then the bassinage thing appears contradictory in terms of when to add the salt. Weird.

At the weekend I added all the remaining water and it was pretty much swimming. Just ended up with an impossible sticky blob. In 12 months of this business it's the only time I've abandoned. This time round I managed 65g (including the 25g with the salt) before deciding it was enough. That still left ~150g remaining which seems like a lot, although she does acknowledge it varies with flour.

Managed to preshape it into something decent looking this time. Certainly feels full of air...

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Mine never look like that. More like a cow pat

My worst Kimble effort is pictured below. Something that isn’t clear but is mentioned somewhere is that the recipes are the upper limit of hydration, ymmv and reduce the water.

I think it’d be much better if a range of water was suggested and that you start at the lower edge and then increase. I started to become frustrated as clearly my flour is not as thirsty as hers and I could just about make a boule but there was no skin tension and i could do multiple pre shapes but the bread would never hold shape, after a night of retarded proving the dough would almost pour out of the banneton and the loaf below just became dog snack.

I think her recipes are tasty but would start out knocking 100ml to 150ml of water off each one. But higher hydration loaves do tend to have less rise and spring and actually looking at a lot of the images hers are not super lufty or showing great ears.

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I’ve never heard of Vanessa kimbell before.

https://www.sourdough.co.uk/basic-sourdough-tin-loaf/

This recipe doesn’t even require kneading!

Q to the better sourdough folk; any harm in ever doing an overnight autolease?

I’m certainly not one of the better folk but can’t see how an extended autolyse would be beneficial. 15-20 minutes seems to be the normal

I think it'll depend on the percentage of levain build/mother and how much water you're using plus if you're adding the levain/mother before the autolyse stage. The autolyse is to help the flour absorb the water, to breakdown the proteins and to create sugars for the levain/mother to feed from.

I think a baking weekend is in order. Basic bitch white tonight, pizza tomorrow and hot cross buns.

I’ve got a loaf proofing atm. Made of point of keeping the heating on and putting the bowl of dough in the sink surrounded by warm water. It’s bubbling nicely.

An insta- baker I follow does overnight with salt in the fridge, presumably to slow down the process a lot.

Dan Lepard's spiced stout recipe HCBs. My shaping on these was a little rustic, but as ever they tasted amazing.

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first attempt with the recently purchased baking steel...

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🤞🏼