MANNA's blog

Oven base and sub-floor built. Next a layer of concrete board, then 6" of foamglass insulation and another layer of concrete board. From there Med-Duty firebrick for the hearth floor. The dome will be fireclay and sand. Insulation layer for dome vermiculite and fireclay. The oven will be under a roof so no need to further weather-proof at that point. It can be stucco'd for a more finished look and protection. The base can be discarded in the future and the sub-floor lifted and moved to a new spot if needed. I hope to purchase a trailer and move it there permanently.

The last 12 hours has been one of those days. When I mixed up my final dough last night it just seemed wrong. I ran all the numbers and it shouldnt have felt like it did. I had to add flour, but I shouldnt have. Then in all the cleaning and getting the kids to bed I forgot about the dough. Woke up at 430 in the morning realizing I left the dough sitting on the table all night. Fear set in that it would be over-proofed and I wouldnt be able to save it. I went down half asleep, scaled and shaped the loafs. Put them into the brotforms and went back to bed.

Dough was from pg.22, sauce was New York-New Jersey on pg.28, finished with garlic oil from pg.29, cheese was fresh mozzarella (grated, easier said than done) I made 3 pizzas. The first two in 500 degree oven using pizza stones placed at specified oven locations. I used top stone first then moved to bottom stone. Allowed about 10 min recovery time before loading another pizza. For fun I did my third pizza with the broiler. Once the oven recovered I turned off the oven and broiler to high. Gave it about 5 min then loaded the pizza on top stone.

Here is the pic of my other loaf for this bake, Frisian Black Bread.

Here is my first bake of week two recipes, Milwaukee Rye. Very good bread. Nice soft crumb and a chewy crust.

I have been busy with work and trying to fit in baking here and there. Took a moment to upload some pics of my bakes over the past weeks.

Here is the barley bread I made. Hydration was 68% and the ground barley took 30% of the flour weight. Salt .025%

Here is a pic of american style sponge cake with strawberry jam and topped with whipped creme.

I had commented on doing this awhile back. I kept feeding my levain intill it reached 1200g. Pulled 200 off and added salt to the rest. Hydration is around 65%. Not totally sure since I just went by feel and it felt about 65. Bulk ferment at room temp then shaped and into the fridge for a cold proof overnite. It has a nice fruity smell from the levain being at a young stage and having a meal of barley from this past weekends bake. Its cooling now and I will cut into it after work.

So, here is a pic of the bread this time letting the levain go 48 hours after a feeding and using 40% preferment. The acid smells were just a bit more pronounced. Still no real tart flavor to the loaf.Taste is really nice though. Im building my levain in stages and plan on baking another loaf ina couple of days with 50% preferment. Soon I will be at the 100% preferment point. What an interesting bake that will be. I will just be baking my starter, but isnt that what we do now?

I have changed the feeding of my levain. I now feed it 1: .5: .5 every 24 hours. It has been a week now. The bake this morning produced a house full of nice sour smells. I tasted this loaf and still no tangy bread. This bulk fermented at room temp then went into the fridge overnight for final proofing. Im happy with the results. A nice crunchy crust and soft crumb. I would like to have a more sour flavor to it. Im thinking of increasing the levain in the dough. My levain sits at room temp and this time of the year is around 65 degrees.

Im not a big scone person, I obviously have been eating the wrong scones. These things are awesome! Light, flaky, and buttery. These have changed my mind on scones. I followed the recipe with nothing unusual. I baked in a conventional oven. After the stated time the scones still were not brown. I turned on the convection and lowered to 325. After 10 more minutes they were browned perfectly. I will have to double check my oven temp. or just bake with convection next time for the entire bake.