To David Snyder.
Thank you for encouraging me to go BIG.
This is the biggest single loaf I ever made, and it is as big as my oven can handle.
Hamelmans Miche Pointe-A-Caillere, made with Bacheldre ... Unbleached White flour.
** Added: a picture of the flour I used, at the end of the post **
Dough weight: 2300g
Baked weight: 1935g
Diameter: 32cm
Height: 9.5cm
Hi,
Along with croissants, the miches (Hamelman and Shiao-Pings post Miche Gerard Rubaud, the post that initially lured me into TFL) felt quite out of reach, and I had as many failures as trials.
Recently I ordered a bag of
Bacheldre Watermill Organic Stoneground Strong Unbleached White Flourin the belief it was strong white flour.
... and some oof the regular posters might have wondered what happened.
Rather a lot, I suppose.
In terms of TFL - I am still catching up - all those rye posts by the bakers who attended the Hamelman class ...
Let's start with christmas - I received what seems a brain-splitting present: A voucher for a pastry course with Ghalid Assyb at Bertinet's in Bath, this was given inside a book about the DASH diet...
A commuter-friend travelling with me to London on the train used to live in Ravensburg, in a region in Germany called Oberschwaben.
One day he told me he really misses a speciality from there called Seelen.
They are rolls with an open crumb and a slightly chewy crust, sprinkled with caraway and coarse salt.
Searching the internet I found a number of recipes, and some descriptions of the "original": a roll made with spelt, using high hydration, long fermentation, and a wet, hot bake.
Got it right, at last!
Berliner Landbrot -
70% Dove's Farm light rye
30% Bacheldre Organic Stoneground Strong White Flour
During his apprenticeship the baker Tom Roetz investigated the behaviour of machine-prepared rye preferments vs hand-prepared rye preferments using a standard "Berliner Landbrot" formula.
My version of "Berliner Landbrot" is adapted from his paper, which is available online:
Being a home baker, one of the most amazing things for me to achieve in my baking is consistency. As a home baker one gets rarely the opportunity to bake big batches, and the natural limits are oven capacity and proving space.
During the last four weeks I have been asked twice to bake for larger occasions, and I managed to churn out about 70 braided rolls on each occasion. Great fun, and also quite a learning curve in managing resources and dough handling.
I wanted to make some bread according to the Quarter Sponge Method as outlined by Elizabeth David / Walter Banfield ever since I came across it more than a year ago.
The details are intriguing: A standard metod used to make "Batch Bread" in Scotland well into the thirties, it uses a long fermentation process and a minimal amount of yeast. A sachet of yeast will make about 30Kg of bread!
The result of my first bake: As close to shop bought sandwich bread as one can get - just with flour, water, salt, yeast and a 16 hour fermentation!
Here some pictures; details follow.
I have got a very simple fan-only oven (BEKO), and it took me a while figure out how to put it to its best use - with lots of inspiration from TFL.
This is how I bake my bread:
Usually use an oven stone and a metal baking sheet.
You can see the backplate of the oven cavity in the picture below - the shelf positions and the hot air outlets are highlighted:
I noticed that airflow changes a lot when loading the oven in different ways - it is not always the bit nearest to an outlet that gets burnt first!
