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Feb. 21st, 2013 07:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickBread, round 2
Bread round 2 was the same recipe as Bread, round 1. Bread round 1 did not last very long because I gave some of it to my cousin (whom I guess was not impressed because I have not heard back on that front) but also because I ate the part I didn't give away all up nom nom nom. I did the recipe again to make sure I kind of knew what I was doing here before I started to change things up. A baseline understanding of what the dough is supposed to look and feel like, of how your starter works, of what "fully proofed" means, of how much degassing is really supposed to take place during shaping -- you gotta have this before you can go off-road.
Also, I realize that I'm in the "n00b gainz" stage of this. Rapid and practically superhuman improvement is possible early on in a lot of processes because you suck so damn badly at the outset. (Improvement at doing-new-things starts off grand but then slows and tapers off, kind of a y=ln(x) shape. You'll still improve after the n00b gainz, but it will take more consistent and ongoing effort than the n00b gainz. In my personal world, n00b gainz are your consolation prize for having to look like an idiot because you are a novice and inexpert. I realize that in Normal People World, it's expected and normal to look like a clumsy, inexpert novice when you Try New Things, but I do not live in Normal People World.) If you do a different or new recipe each time, you are not going to be able to see as much improvement because the recipe is different. How much improvement is your skill, how much improvement is the recipe? Yeah. So you might be having n00b gainz all over the place and NOT EVEN SEEING THEM, which would suck. How would you know if you were getting better or not? Making the same thing repeatedly gives you results you can compare. It's not going to broaden your experience, but it will give you depth of experience at one thing.
For those following along at home, the bread being made here is from The Bread Baker's Apprentice. It's the Basic Sourdough Bread. I'm using my own sourdough starter that I made out of rye. (It's now a mix of white and wheat... but still very vigorous. I feed it 2x daily unless I forget. It doubles reliably.) I figure this book has approximately fifteen more seconds until I convert all the amounts in the fucking book to grams. I have a scale that does grams or ounces. It does to tenth-of-gram or to tenth-of-ounce. Thing is, there's a lot more fluff in measuring "4.5 ounces" than there is in measuring "127.6 grams" because ozzes are a lot bigger than grams. I would like for the book to be in grams, damn it. It is not. This recipe, however, is now annotated in pen. For grams.
This time I did not "cut the firm starter into ten pieces and let it warm up first for an hour before adding it to the flour and water". I wasn't in a hurry.
I also did not use lukewarm water for mixing because I didn't want the dough to get ahead of me. I used tap-water-cold temperature. First rise after mixing/kneading was (as expected) slightly slower as a result. Second rise (after shaping) was the expected 2.5 hours, though. (It's a decent sized window. 2 hours is a little soon, 3 hours is probably a bit too much.)
After the first rise, I degassed the huge surface bubbles (they blow up and be hollow and stupid on the outsides of finished loaves if you don't) and folded it Left over, Right over, Top over, Bottom over to make a ball. Then I put the ball (seam side up) in my towel-lined colander to raise up. If I had an impressive banneton I would be using that, but I don't. An colander is what I have. I covered the colander with my upside-down medium-sized mixing bowl (also serves as the "lid" for the huge frying pan I cook the bread on) to retain moisture and prevent drafts and let it get to work.
I'm still trying to figure out what "fully risen" looks like. People keep talking about poking the dough to see how much it has risen. I think my dough is done when it's pillowy and soft and doesn't spring back from being poked in 30 seconds but does spring back at least halfway within a minute's time. I suspect the only way to nail this down is to kind of check in on the bread dough every 30 minutes for a while until it totally passes the window of "risen" and hits the window of "zomg, too much!".
For baking, I'm still good with the 20 minutes under the "lid" and then 20 minutes without the lid. More baking makes the bread drier inside and more interesting... but it gets browner. I fear the browner. Also, I haven't got the best idea on how much cooking is indicated because I have not yet let a bread get all the way cool without cutting into it (and thus I'm embracing a slightly gummy crust from insufficient cooling time and this skews my data on how much cooking is needed) because The Enthusiasm! The Crackling! The Warm Bread With Butter! Loaf #2 is a gift, so it will get all the way cool without being cut. I will take pictures of the bread innards when it is gifted and cut so that we can see how it came out.
Bread round 2 was the same recipe as Bread, round 1. Bread round 1 did not last very long because I gave some of it to my cousin (whom I guess was not impressed because I have not heard back on that front) but also because I ate the part I didn't give away all up nom nom nom. I did the recipe again to make sure I kind of knew what I was doing here before I started to change things up. A baseline understanding of what the dough is supposed to look and feel like, of how your starter works, of what "fully proofed" means, of how much degassing is really supposed to take place during shaping -- you gotta have this before you can go off-road.
Also, I realize that I'm in the "n00b gainz" stage of this. Rapid and practically superhuman improvement is possible early on in a lot of processes because you suck so damn badly at the outset. (Improvement at doing-new-things starts off grand but then slows and tapers off, kind of a y=ln(x) shape. You'll still improve after the n00b gainz, but it will take more consistent and ongoing effort than the n00b gainz. In my personal world, n00b gainz are your consolation prize for having to look like an idiot because you are a novice and inexpert. I realize that in Normal People World, it's expected and normal to look like a clumsy, inexpert novice when you Try New Things, but I do not live in Normal People World.) If you do a different or new recipe each time, you are not going to be able to see as much improvement because the recipe is different. How much improvement is your skill, how much improvement is the recipe? Yeah. So you might be having n00b gainz all over the place and NOT EVEN SEEING THEM, which would suck. How would you know if you were getting better or not? Making the same thing repeatedly gives you results you can compare. It's not going to broaden your experience, but it will give you depth of experience at one thing.
For those following along at home, the bread being made here is from The Bread Baker's Apprentice. It's the Basic Sourdough Bread. I'm using my own sourdough starter that I made out of rye. (It's now a mix of white and wheat... but still very vigorous. I feed it 2x daily unless I forget. It doubles reliably.) I figure this book has approximately fifteen more seconds until I convert all the amounts in the fucking book to grams. I have a scale that does grams or ounces. It does to tenth-of-gram or to tenth-of-ounce. Thing is, there's a lot more fluff in measuring "4.5 ounces" than there is in measuring "127.6 grams" because ozzes are a lot bigger than grams. I would like for the book to be in grams, damn it. It is not. This recipe, however, is now annotated in pen. For grams.
This time I did not "cut the firm starter into ten pieces and let it warm up first for an hour before adding it to the flour and water". I wasn't in a hurry.
I also did not use lukewarm water for mixing because I didn't want the dough to get ahead of me. I used tap-water-cold temperature. First rise after mixing/kneading was (as expected) slightly slower as a result. Second rise (after shaping) was the expected 2.5 hours, though. (It's a decent sized window. 2 hours is a little soon, 3 hours is probably a bit too much.)
After the first rise, I degassed the huge surface bubbles (they blow up and be hollow and stupid on the outsides of finished loaves if you don't) and folded it Left over, Right over, Top over, Bottom over to make a ball. Then I put the ball (seam side up) in my towel-lined colander to raise up. If I had an impressive banneton I would be using that, but I don't. An colander is what I have. I covered the colander with my upside-down medium-sized mixing bowl (also serves as the "lid" for the huge frying pan I cook the bread on) to retain moisture and prevent drafts and let it get to work.
I'm still trying to figure out what "fully risen" looks like. People keep talking about poking the dough to see how much it has risen. I think my dough is done when it's pillowy and soft and doesn't spring back from being poked in 30 seconds but does spring back at least halfway within a minute's time. I suspect the only way to nail this down is to kind of check in on the bread dough every 30 minutes for a while until it totally passes the window of "risen" and hits the window of "zomg, too much!".
For baking, I'm still good with the 20 minutes under the "lid" and then 20 minutes without the lid. More baking makes the bread drier inside and more interesting... but it gets browner. I fear the browner. Also, I haven't got the best idea on how much cooking is indicated because I have not yet let a bread get all the way cool without cutting into it (and thus I'm embracing a slightly gummy crust from insufficient cooling time and this skews my data on how much cooking is needed) because The Enthusiasm! The Crackling! The Warm Bread With Butter! Loaf #2 is a gift, so it will get all the way cool without being cut. I will take pictures of the bread innards when it is gifted and cut so that we can see how it came out.
