A baking day in pictures

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Floydm on 26 Jun 2007 at 20:55
Sunday I finally got a real baking day in. It was the first time in... 2 months? 3 months? A very long time. I started with the Sourdough English Muffin recipe that Kjknits posted a month or so ago. They were *amazing*. There wasn't a terribly interesting smell or anything, but when I bit into one it was just one of those "Oh, wow" moments. I will definitely be baking them again. Pretty nice crumb inside. I don't have cutter or tins, I just used a mason jar lid. The ones I was happiest with I left about 1/3 inch tall when cutting and then squashed a bit wider and thinner before cooking. I also make something like a cross between my standard pain sur poolish and the famous no knead bread. The hydration on this was quite high, probably in the 70-75% range. It spread a little more than I would have liked, but the crumb was very nice (though slightly underbaked). Particularly nice since I'd run out of bread flour and was just baking with store brand AP flour. I also made three sourdough loaves... ...and experimented a little with the scoring. I thought it looked like a yin-yang, but my wife says it looks more like the Safeway Logo.
Maybe a little moister? It kinda looks that way, but I didn't weigh my ingredients to get exact hydration. One thing I definitely did was roll them out thinner. They were no more than a centimeter thick when they hit the pan. I suspect that makes a difference.
Beautiful bread, Floyd, a day well spent. Now a couple of questions when you have time. Could you describe your cross bread loaf a little more? Then which sourdough recipe did you use? Lastly, did you chill the loaves? The lovely crusts have those little "freckles" (which I thought I read PR says are called pigeon eyes) and I seem to think that's from a cool retardation? Just when I get totally depressed and ready to hang up my dough whisk you come up with great pictures. Onward and upward, A
Floyd, I was going through the heap of papers with recipes next to my computer and found one titled "Floyd's Sourdough" - so I guess that would have been the recipe you used. It didn't mention retarding the loaves though, so I am still wondering how you got the nice crust. I made the NKB with steel cut oats today and it is delicious and turned out really well, so I think I may keep baking, A

OK you got me, I started a batch just now. Those look great Floyd.

What ever happened to the experiment with capturing wild yeast in SFO? Get beasties captured?

Eric

Safeway yin/yang slash and the crumb on the english muffins. I really want those nooks and crannies. I tried PMcCools sourdough recipe that was posted last year. My thinking was that I was going to have to make a higher hydration formula and to bake them I'd need to have some rings. Someday I'll get around to buying some.

I made a couple batches of Floyds English muffins or rather kjknits recipe. They tasted good but I thought they were a little tough on the tops and bottoms where they baked in the spider pan.  Does anyone have an idea how to make these totally tasty? I used AP flour and followed the formula pretty closely.

Eric