Has anyone else got this book or tried baking from it ?
Every recipe we try makes very dense bread that feels like it needed more yeast. This is by taking the ingredients item by item, following all the instructions properly and just always ending up with this heavy dense ball that doesn't feel like it's ever going to expand. The rise never quite happens much and we know our starter and baker's yeast are fine. I just don't get. Three different recipes, all the same result. Too small, too dense, too heavy. And yes, we are making sure we have the right equivalent for the T-0type of French flour.
Anyone have any experience here with this book?
I am not familiar with the book or the recipes, but I suspect that the amount of yeast does not need to be changed. Give the dough more time instead. Depending on the kind of yeast you use, the temperature, and other variables, your dough may just need a little more time.
I don't know the book but those loaves on the cover look pretty flat, don't they? Could you give us a summary of the simplest one you have tried? I don't mean to paste in a large amount of copyrighted text, but a summary of ingredients and amounts and a brief rundown of the procedure. Maybe there is a translation error in amounts, or something systematic like that. Otherwise it's hard to see how a basic yeasted dough could fail to rise.
TomP
Recipes aren't copyrightable, so as long it's just the list of ingredients and the step-by-step procedure, there's no need to paraphrase or summarize.
The example pages on the Amazon listing (for baguette, focaccia, and brioche) list 1.7% - 3% fresh yeast and 30m to 2h15m fermentation time. These seem pretty reasonable, but you probably just need to let them rise longer. The problem I see with these recipes is that they don't give any indicators for the endpoint of fermentation (% increase in volume, for instance), which makes it hard if you don't already know what the dough is supposed to look like.
I'll copy in a couple of the recipes we've had problems with. The baguette tradition and the boule we made yesterday.
This was it.. it should have been twice this size and the crumb was super dense. Not uncooked dense, but almost like a rye bread when this was over 80% white bread flour.
Why twice this size?
Please post a crumb photo.
Increase proofing temp. A nice loaf can be produced using very little yeast.
I should say - don't go by the book - go by the dough. And the dough should tell ya to use less water and/or more yeast. At least that's where I'd start - and it's just a start. Enjoy!
Their recipes use water necessary for flours with 14-15% moisture content, their industry standard. At home, we usually have much drier flours with 5-10% moisture content, and thus need to add more water to to flour in order to achieve proper dough consistency and fermentation rate. Without it, breads would come out impossibly dense and tasteless, underfermented.