March 18, 2020 - 7:38pm
Parbaking for covid-free bread for neighbors
Hi all,
I like to make four loaves of my pain de campagne and share with neighbors, but people are feeling a bit paranoid these days, especially here in Seattle.
I was thinking that people might like it if they could finish the bake in their own oven to ensure that the bread was covid-free.
I bake in dutch ovens at 450 for 30 minutes, then take the lids off and give it another 10-15 until the color is what I'm looking for.
Does anybody have experience stopping the bake 5, 10, or 15 minutes early and then finishing the bake within the next 24 hours?
Any advice would be appreciated!
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I guess you can pre-bake them. So you would take them out when they have a light brown color and then your patrons finish it with an additional hot 10 min. or so. Kinda what you do with those pre-baked supermarket breads.
When you come up with something, please let us know.
I'm eager to know the guidelines too, especially based on internal temp, since that would be more widely applicable to loaves of different sizes, versus time, which varies by loaf size.
What is the "safe temp" for flour-based baked products? I would pre-bake at least to that temp.
What is your ending or desired internal temp for a loaf? I would tell the recipients that temp, and to go by that.
The oven temp for reheating, so as to avoid much browning is what? 350 F to 380 F ?
Thanks, I will.
to be able to prebake, lower the baking temp for a longer bake and remove when the loaf starts to color. Keep the lids on longer or tent loaves to prevent too much browning. The lower temp will make sure the center bakes.
The the second bake is hot for about 10 minutes to color the crust.
Those are so beautiful, I can't imagine anyone turning them down. They can also take these loaves. Dunk under running water for 2 seconds and pop into a hot oven, on the rack, until crispy again, about 7 minutes.
Thank you!
If I have an extra loaf I'll let it cool entirely, and then wrap it tight in cling-wrap. Then I place it into a ziplock freezer bag and into the freezer it goes. When I'm in need I'll take it out of the freezer and out of the freezer bag and leave it on the counter overnight. Then I'll warm up the oven to 350 and place the loaf on the oven rack (no pan or tray underneath) for 15 minutes. Works great ever time! Good luck..
Thanks!
Looks like this subject got some good discussion here:
http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/14281/need-help-par-baking
Just stumbled across this: In his recent book “Living Bread” Dan Leader offers the following about par-baking and freezing: Bakeries use this as a method to assure the availability of full line of bread styles throughout the day.
1) bake the loaf normally but shorten the baking time 5-8 minutes
2) cool the loaf for 20 minutes
3) put in freezer, unwrapped, for 2 hours
4) wrap and return to freezer for storage
To finish, 15-20 minutes in a 350 oven “to defrost and finish baking at the same time.” He adds that, “These breads taste perfectly fresh and delicious”
That's a great find. Thank you for sharing it with us!
Just to wrap this thread up in case anybody stumbles across it...
I ended up deciding that the best way to par-bake my bread was to stop the bake 10 minutes early and let recipients finish up in their own ovens until the color looked good.
But more generally, as others have described, par-baking just doesn't seem very useful or necessary. Bread comes out better if you bake it all the way the first time. (And you can still freshen it up at 350 if you want.) Although it could be good to par-bake if you have a bread donee that really wants to make sure the loaf has been properly "decontaminated".
Regarding the freezing trick, that did not work at all for me. They must have been using a much smaller, less dense loaf, because my loaves were still frozen solid in the center long after the outside had achieved the desired color.
Thanks again for all the input!