Deck oven baking improving.

Toast

 

 

So I was pretty happy with the way these turned out.  After a couple of months of using this old deck oven I'm starting to figure out how to give it the best steam I can.   Basically just loading in all four loaves at once after setting a large flat pan of ice toward the back right of the oven, then opening the damper about halfway through and rotating a little bit.   Sadly, I don't think it's possible to get that gorgeous reddish hue because there simply isn't enough steam and this old oven leaks I'm sure.  

But anyway, I decided to do a rough interpretation of Josey Baker's parmesan peppercorn loaves.  I'm using mostly type 75 stone ground whole wheat from Carolina Ground right outside Asheville, NC.  Formula was as follows...

for 2 loaves:

1066 G H20

980 G type 75 flour

286 Central Milling all purpose bee-hive 

240 G block parmesan (some grated and some chopped into small cubes)

fresh ground peppercorn (to taste....i didn't measure)

23 G celtic sea salt

240 G ripe leaven

 

I made a leaven at about 9:30 AM consisting of 40 G ripe 100 percent hydration whole wheat starter, 300 G water, and 150 ww flour and 150 all purpose.   The leaven until 8 PM that evening (my kitchen hangs around 72 F)  After that I added all the water and flour and did an hour long autolyse, I then followed by adding the salt and parmesan and black pepper and began mixing.  

The bulk fermentation took about 4 hours after heating the water up to 85 degrees or so, after that they were all shaped and left for a 48 degree cold proof four about 15 hours.