WW Out of the Wood Oven...Again

Aloha Bakers, I know it's been a while since my last post. I have been baking and brewing as usual, but a little too busy to stop by. I made some time today to show a few shots of what I have been up too. 

Flour note: I have since switched to Giusto's WW flour, super fine grade. The consistency is like white flour and it is by far the best/easiest flour I have ever worked with. I really recommend it over Bob's, especially since Bob's WW flour started to get more and more course. 

I enjoy a batch retard now, instead of rushing to BF, SF and proof all in one morning, plus starting a fire and getting my oven temps perfect. Cold retarding dough has made my schedule much easier to work around and the dough comes out more sourdough-like and also more red on the crust. And to top it all off, I get a better bottom on loaves since the cold dough can handle a hotter temp, which mine are around 625 floor and 550 air. 

Just got pulled these out a few hours ago: 

First try with a braided bread. Had to use our indoor oven since the weather was awful that day. I was making terrible braids until my brother, a 70 year old French man, came to the rescue and showed me how to braid properly. I used caramelized onions in the dough. Whenever I switch to the indoor oven I always forget how to use it. I'm much better at just making a fire and baking that way. 

I continue to make pita bread once a month or so. I will be baking a batch of 40 tomorrow. These are by far the easiest things to make. They are sourdough of course. 

I can't recall if I posted my FatBoy Baguettes before. I really got into making giant fat baguettes for a while. Is it a batard, is it a baguette? Who cares. When you smother it in garlic oil it doesn't really matter anymore. 

I got into roasted sesame seed buns for a while as well. I just had to go through each kind of bread and make them right. For some reason I only took a photo of the dough for these. Who knows. What I do know is that they made excellent buns and dinner rolls. One of the brothers makes homemade veggie burgers that go superb with homemade buns. I started to run out of seeds as I went, but in the end it didn't matter. 

I really wish I took a photo of my bagels. I also got into bagels for a few sessions. The shaping and boiling was so much fun, but too much work. I think I will table bagels for a while. 

This is an old pic of my favorite type of scoring and color. I have mostly made batards like this over and over again since my last post. I got to the point where I could get them identical each bake, so I moved on to other things. After so many loaves you don't really want to take photos anymore! Yes, I have always lacked the crumb photo in my posts. At the point of cutting and serving I just don't feel like photos anymore. Besides, they all look the same! 

Well Bakers, that is it for now. I hope to give updates every so often and I will try my best. I also hope that all you new bakers out there keep going and keep practicing. After a while baking gets to be second nature and you can foresee any possible issue and fix before anything actually goes wrong. Also, there are a lot of techniques for this and that, but what works best is what you figure out for your own setup. I use a wood oven that isn't even for bread, it's for pizza, and in the beginning I really struggled. But with the help of some of TFL masters and hours and hours of hard work I eventually figured out just what was going on. 

To me, sourdough bread isn't that forgiving. You want to get your recipe straight and get that starter alive and rising before adding it to your dough. Once the starter falls, you should consider waiting to bake and refeed that thing. There's nothing quite like catching the temps in a wood oven as they fall, and catching that proof to where it is just right. When the two meet, you have a work of art. 

Don't get frustrated, just get ready for the next batch. And don't worry if your loaf doesn't look like someone else's. You didn't use their ingredients and you certainly weren't in their kitchen. What you made is yours and no one can take that away from you. 

With love, Raj.