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Hey everyone! I'm an avid reader as of a few days ago and finally decided to add some content! I"ve been baking at home for a couple years, attended Oregon Culinary Institute for Baking and Pastry, and now work in a test kitchen, baking up yummy deliciousness. I, as many others, have high hopes of someday opening my own bakery right here in Portland and focusing on artisan breads.

Last night I took one of my favorite Italian bread recipes and simply changed it from one loaf to three smaller baguettes. At the time of the picture, one had already been consumed by my girlfriend and a friend that was visiting. I've been working on getting my slashing down on baguettes and think that I finally nailed it here. Let me know what you think!

 What is this?  Loaves made with commercial yeast, no pre-ferment, and all commercially ground flour?  I'm flashing back. 

 Must...use...only...iceberg...lettuce...in...the...salad.

 Can...not...find...love beads.

But I promised I would try this as part of the baguette surprise and challenge.  It was like riding a bike.  How fast those commercial yeasts do their little thing! (6 hours from scaling to bread and 2 of that was my slow mixing!)  How easy!

I made my standard baguette formula (65% hydration) adapted to commercial yeast.  I feel that my % of yeast - which was .5% - was a bit high, but looking at dmsynder's formula it seemed ok.

I did not use any whole wheat flour because I wanted to go "single factor" on this try - my sourdough baguettes vs. commercial yeast.

I've written up the technique and formula before and I followed it as only I can (like a maniac) - although I did have to adjust the timings for the bulk ferments (1 hour, fold, 1 hour) and proofing (40 minutes).  Shaping went "as usual" - I did not try to be especially light in my shaping although I have been told that I have a "light but firm" hand "naturally" (yeah, after years of practice...). I got a little distracted during the scoring, but steamed and baked as usual.

Oh my goodness!  The oven spring!  I remember when bread sprang quite like that!  This commercial yeast is the bee's knees! No wonder so many people use it!  Wow!

 Here' a picture of the cooling loaves where my haste in scoring is clearly evident.  But even so, the slashes opened well and have some nice grigne.  Alas, it seems that no yeast wild or commercial will improve my photography skills, though.

I did NOT leave them in the turned off oven for 5 minutes, as again, I wanted to go all single factor on this.  When the loaves came out of the oven the crust was crackly and fragile.  I kept poking my fingers through it as I squeezed the loaves to test doneness and it came off in flakes.  As the loaves cooled, however, they lost the crackly quality somewhat.  I really think the slower cooling has some virtues and some role to play in that "crackly crust." (I also now think that excess steam is the culprit on cuts not opening...)

Here are a couple of crumb shots.  The crumb is not as open as my normal baguette, but it is not horrific.  The slashing flaws have a role to play there.

The bread had a "fluffy" feeling when I bit into it.  Very soft  and springy as compared to my normal levain baguette.

And the taste?  Well, bland.  Nice, sweet, wheaty, no hint of yeast, but bland.  This would make a lovely "carrier bread" as far as I am concerned - some really good butter and jam would go nicely and is almost required.  I'd gladly toast it up for a breakfast tartine.  Remember that I haven't eaten any breads not produced with wild yeast in at least three years now, so my perspective is somewhat skewed.  But so easy! This commercial yeast is the best things since - well, since sliced bread!

 (Seriously, you can see why bakers, pressed to get bread on the shelves for morning customers, embraced this marvelous yeast when it first appeared.  Taste?  Close enough.  People will eat it if that's all we sell and if we sell it warm, who will know?  For my personal baking I would never forgo the preferment - even using commercial yeast - because it is just so easy to do and can be done during non working hours.  But for speed from mixing to baked loaf after long centuries of baking with wild yeast, this must have been viewed with tremendous enthusiasm.)

At some point I will try the 10% whole wheat.  I mean, why not? The whole process is so fast...

David, I hope my experiences are helpful to you in some small way.

 Happy Baking!

I'm taking another stab at that rye with onions.  I have the dough made and in the 'fridge.  I'm a little concerned that it is wetter than I'm used to and I'm not sure how much influence the onions and olive oil have on the hydration of the dough.  I added an extra 8% or so of flour to my normal 70% hydration formula, but I'm worried about the wetness.  I'm going to try baking one as a boule from a form.  I haven't done that in a long time.  I've been doing exclusively the baguette shaping technique for quite a while now.  It will be a challenge with dough this wet.  Plenty of flour available on the counter to combat stickiness.

I'm very intrigued with a couple of posts that I read on Dave's blog (http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/7503/russian-rye&rdquo) about using high extraction flour with rye.  I'm finding rye more attractive lately and I've used Giusto's 20% bran whole wheat flour for a long time.  I believe that that is a "high extraction" flour - all the germ and 20% of the bran.  Anyway, it's exciting.  And molasses!!  Why didn't I think of that?

When I first started making bread with this site I had a name come to mind "Three Mile Rye" because I live on Three Mile Road.  So this is like rev 1.0 of Three Mile Rye.

Formula at this point:

20g starter from fridge, 40g water, 40g flour mix (20%rye 80% white)

ferment to double, add:

200g water, 200g flour, 3 medium onions minced and slightly cooked in olive oil and cooled

ferment to double, add:

660g water, 1100g flour mix, 25g salt

stretch and fold, stretch and fold, refrigerate.

I plan to bake half in the morning with just onions and then add caraway seeds to the remaining half of the dough during shaping and bake them in the afternoon or the next day.

:-Paul

In many recipes I am reading the amount of butter neeeded is measured in tablespoon , cup , half stick etc but unfortunately I have in the refrigerator a big chunk of butter that is not in easy stick ready to be divide , my question is how translate this measure in ounces or grams and do any difference in the recipe, are any specific conversion table for butter ?

        Thanks for the help , Marco

I wish to keep the crumbs on my crumb cake or buns SOFT. (Like Entenmans does). How can I keep the crumbs from getting hard and crunchy? Thank you

A few weeks ago I saw a post with a reference to a Honey Lemon Whole Wheat loaf. As I recall a couple posters had commented that this bread was high on the best breads list for them. A fellow I have high regard for (PMcCool), suggested I would like it, so I decided to give it a spin.

The original recipe is from Bernard Clayton. One of the things Clayton does in this and other recipes I have made is to use very warm water for the mix along with a short primary ferment time and then an overnight chilled proof. Since the dough starts off life warm, it does rise fully while in the refrigerator. I suspect this also helps develop a better flavor. Another component of the flavor being the grated lemon rind, I suspect is enhanced by the warm water helping release the oils of the fruit.

The crumb is about what you would expect from a 40% Whole Wheat mix. The dough and later the bread has a very unusual and surprising aroma with the Lemon. This is an aromatic bread of the highest order. Paul said he liked the way the lemon plays off the WW and I think that's a good description of what I sence. So grab a copy of Claytons book and give this a try.

Eric

I bake bread at least twice a week plus the cookies and quick breads that are the treats around here, but I just haven't had the time to post.  That combined with the fact that most of my bread baking is about getting sandwiches made that my kids will eat!  Panned loaves didn't seem interesting enough for me to keep track of, but hey, I'm baking like crazy and sometimes I like to look back and see the results of all the work.  Too bad I didn't get a shot of the eight loaves of challah last week.

So, I made this last week - It's called Clay's Sourdough Multigrain off the King Arthur site.  I rarely follow recipes exactly, this one called for wheat bran and I used wheat germ, also I subbed spelt for one of the flours.   I used Bob's Red Mill 8 Grain cereal for the grain mix.  It didn't  rise a lot, (the recipe said it wouldn't) but it was light and had a wonderful, developed flavor.  But- my kids won't touch it- it has "things" in it.

Because most of my bread baking is  sandwich bread, I try to find something different, just to make it more interesting for me.  I think my kids would eat the same bread every day.  This next bake is "Our Favorite Sandwich Bread" also from the KAF site.

Again I changed a few things.  My changes:  I doubled it, I used rice milk for the milk, I subbed Earth Balance margerine for the butter (and used a bit less) and I made it with half white whole wheat.  It needed close to 1/2c more rice milk to get the right consistency.

It rose beautifully and then took off again in the oven.  I haven't tasted it, but it smells great and made nice PB&J sandwiches this morning. I think it's a kid pleaser.  Straight bread, easy to make too.

I haven't been taking pics lately but have been baking as usual. Wanted to thank David and also document how wonderful this formula is. I have a starter , thanks to Gaarp, that doubles in one hour. I take it out of the fridge 1x a week and feed it q 12h for a total of 2 times and it is fantastic. I also have a rye starter and a bowl of "discard". The San Joaquin is great. Here are pics. Perfect sour for us as we are not wild about lots of sour. I have found that my starter is very happy in the fridge. At least it works for me.

I will pass along one tip that we discovered along the way. We make a lot of breads from Il Fornaio, a great Italian Bread Book. I have stopped making preferment, biga, poolish....I only use my discard...it works wonders. Believe it or not. The bread rises and has the most wonderful complex sweetness. My discard is a blend of both of my starters...rye and white ( alto and sax) and they are both 100% hydration. Try it. Take out the required amount of your discard and sub it for your biga/preferment/poolish...what a treat.

discard as "biga"

Baker Beware!

I'm making a blog entry to document my experience with Leader's Corn-Rye Rounds from Local Breads. The recipe was simple enough and the little rounds seemed to turn out as described by the recipe, but they tasted just awful. I was so disappointed that I didn't even take a picture of these little round rock-like things with a very odd and inharmonious taste of corn and rye. I threw them all in the trash.

--Pamela