Definition: business letter fold. you stretch dough in to rectangle facing away long ways away from you. Fold up bottom 3rd. fold dough from top all the way down to bottom. turn so that sealed dough side is on right and repeat. i will add picks on this in the future.
Before you feed for the 2nd 6 hour rise make sure the dough is very stiff i keep adding flour to dough in a business envelope folding method until it just doesnt seem to be able to accept any more. Then let it rise the 6 hours and refrigerate as mentioned in the previous entry.
Pull dough from fridge 1 hour before you want to mix it!!
In a mixer add 2-1/2 cups of flour 1-1/3 cup water add 2/3 cups of starter in broken up pieces to help it mix. mix it at a slw/med speed for 7-10 minutes. make sure no dry flour is left in bowl. remove bowl from mixer pull out down then adds 1 tblspn oil roll bowl around in oil to cover all sides and cover with plastic wrap. let rise one hour.
AFter one hour scrape dough onto counter and do two buisness letter turn folds.(see above) Place dough in a see through container mark spot on bowl so you know when it is doubled.. about 5 hrs
do not deflate dough round it into a ball by basically pulling down sides of dough so that it is tight and then pinching dough so it will stay in place. and has a half of a ball shape. your going to invert dough into a colander with a floured towell pinched size up covered with oiled plastic wrap and let it rise 4 hours the pinching is where the rise will come thus eliminating the look of it.
one hour before bread is just about ready pre heat oven to 475 degrees (keep reading). and you will need two to 3 cooking sheets and/or a cast iron pan.
BEFORE PREHEATING
A cast iron pan on bottom of oven (or baking sheet(1))
a baking sheet(2) on the middle rack.
need to be in the oven.
keep baking sheet (3) out
after the bread has risen appropriately you need to transfer it from colander to baking sheet (3) without losing the rise. you can do this but placing an oiled paper plate on the bottom of the dough then inverting it onto baking sheet (3) and then slide out. if the dough sinks quite easily and spreads out one of two things was not done a. you did not use bread flour (king arthur) b. the dough was not stiff enough you did not add enough flour this is why i hand mix after using mixer so that i can feel the consistency you will be suprised how much flour the dough can take the rise will give you the softness and flour feeds the rise.
place baking sheet(3) perpendicular on top of other baking sheet(2) so it is easy to take off when you move bread to it. and add 1 cup water to pan on bottom of oven at same time. bake 5 minutes reduce temp to 450 cook 10 minutes. pull bread off of baking sheet(3) place on baking sheet (2) bake until sound hollow and long skewer pulls out clean about 15 more minutes.
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Monday, December 14, 2009
Is your starter healthy are you ready to go
When making your first starter i truly believe that it is best to maintain it in a glass measuring cup so you can see when it really starts to grow so that you know the yeast is really active and the mixture started out after a feeding at one cup and rose to 2 or 3 cups. it should only take a couple days with the little bit of yeast you have added {if you followed my previous post}.
Because i use yeast i like to feed the starter twice daily for at least a week (7 days)to make sure there is enough of a sourdough flavor. I never refrigerate this first week. also, if you see any coloring of the starter like bright colors etc it has gone bad and you must start over. The starter will give off different smells and such but that is normal. I have never had a starter go bad so I cant give you a Picture of it. If you have gotten this far you may have active starter and want to try to bake bread.
STEP Three: pull off 1/4 cup of starter* add to it 1/4 cup of bread flour (once you start this phase it is crucial to use bread flour it counteracts the acidity of the sourdough bread so that it may rise)and 1/8 cup water (don't forget tap water can be bad see earlier posts) let double in size about 6 hours. When doing this i strongly advise mixing the flour then kneading by hand so you can feel the stiffness it should be very stiff. Densities always very, with starters and flours, and it is best to really get a feel for the way the dough feels so you can adjust in future if it doesn't finish exactly as you want.
*ALSO FEED THE original STARTER AND WAIT AN HOUR THEN REFRIGERATE STARTER UNTIL YOU WANT TO USE IT AGAIN IN LESS THAN A WEEK or you will have to warm re feed and the refrigerate for a week. I have been baking bread every couple days to master the bread so I am not sure of the best method of maintaining a starter for long periods of time without baking bread every couple of days but i will let you know
After bread has doubled pull off 1/4 cup again and add 2/3 cup bread flour 1/3 cup water let double in size approximately 6 hours again once it doubles refrigerate dough until you have 12 hours to finish making bread hopefully the next day not more than two days. The keys here are that it must double in size if it is not doubling something is wrong.
Refrigeration: i have refrigerated dough in a many different stages of making the sourdough bread and have determined this is the best time to refrigerate it and get the results you want to have to show off to your friends..
Finally i am giving a lot of information pretty quickly but will finish tomorrow and try to do a summary post also this week i think we will do homemade bagels as well and next week homemade wonder bread it should be fun i have never done either one before.
Because i use yeast i like to feed the starter twice daily for at least a week (7 days)to make sure there is enough of a sourdough flavor. I never refrigerate this first week. also, if you see any coloring of the starter like bright colors etc it has gone bad and you must start over. The starter will give off different smells and such but that is normal. I have never had a starter go bad so I cant give you a Picture of it. If you have gotten this far you may have active starter and want to try to bake bread.
STEP Three: pull off 1/4 cup of starter* add to it 1/4 cup of bread flour (once you start this phase it is crucial to use bread flour it counteracts the acidity of the sourdough bread so that it may rise)and 1/8 cup water (don't forget tap water can be bad see earlier posts) let double in size about 6 hours. When doing this i strongly advise mixing the flour then kneading by hand so you can feel the stiffness it should be very stiff. Densities always very, with starters and flours, and it is best to really get a feel for the way the dough feels so you can adjust in future if it doesn't finish exactly as you want.
*ALSO FEED THE original STARTER AND WAIT AN HOUR THEN REFRIGERATE STARTER UNTIL YOU WANT TO USE IT AGAIN IN LESS THAN A WEEK or you will have to warm re feed and the refrigerate for a week. I have been baking bread every couple days to master the bread so I am not sure of the best method of maintaining a starter for long periods of time without baking bread every couple of days but i will let you know
After bread has doubled pull off 1/4 cup again and add 2/3 cup bread flour 1/3 cup water let double in size approximately 6 hours again once it doubles refrigerate dough until you have 12 hours to finish making bread hopefully the next day not more than two days. The keys here are that it must double in size if it is not doubling something is wrong.
Refrigeration: i have refrigerated dough in a many different stages of making the sourdough bread and have determined this is the best time to refrigerate it and get the results you want to have to show off to your friends..
Finally i am giving a lot of information pretty quickly but will finish tomorrow and try to do a summary post also this week i think we will do homemade bagels as well and next week homemade wonder bread it should be fun i have never done either one before.
Friday, December 11, 2009
"original" lessons learned part of SD recipe
Bread baking I believe is easy but the amount of information on it will spin your head round and round. Every succesful and unsuccesful process for me took days even weeks to master a bread that may or may not taste good.
It is neccesary to post some of the lessons I have learned back when I was unable to manage a starter for long periods due to negligence. The bread that I referred to in my first post solely relied on commercial yeast, and we know from that had no sourdough flavor. Second, I tried to just grow the starter from scratch. OOps i had better give you my DEFINITION of a starter.
Starter: is a combination of flower and water stirred together that will be used to mix with bread flour to make your bread.
(How much flour and water to add? whether or not to add yeast? Feeding: how much? which amounts? how often? can you refrigerate? should you? these are all questions I hope to answer for you so you will not have to go through all of my mistakes.)
Back too Starter from scratch....I mixed equal portions of water and flour about a 1/2 cup each (later i learned to decrease amount of water to 1/4 cup) placed in an extememly clean glass measuring cup, atleast 2 cups covered with plastic wrap. I then fed it twice daily. (by removing a 1/4 cup of mixture and adding 1/4 cup of fresh flour and water) At some point in time the amount was suppose to increase or double go from a 1/2 a cup of mixture to a full cup or more thus telling me i had active yeast in my glass container. I would typically forget about long before it ever doubled.
Needless to say this never worked for me now I always add some small amount of commercial yeast to begin the process.
The most important thing I learned in the beginning, is WATER is crucial! Do not use City water even commercial yeast seems to suffer in city water bottled pure water only. If you believe, bottled water is the devil, it is said that you can leave tap water out for 6 hours or more and it will be fine. I have done this with my summer herbs replanted inside but i will probably never mix it with bread. To risky and has cost me a couple of really good loafs before I realized the cause.
So if you want something to due to begin baking bread my first blog bread Sourdough this is what you need to do. You MUST have these items (in my opinion to begin)
STEP ONE: warm 1/2 cup of bottled water(see above) stir 1/2 of one packet of active yeast if it gets frothy(bubly) in five minutes then it is active mix with one cup bread flour in clear container cover with plastic wrap tightly, do not refrigerate, leave on counter.
STEP TWO: remove 1/4 cup of mixture replace with 1/4 cup bread flour 1/8 cup bottled water. every 12 hours until doubled reaches 3 cups or so.
It is neccesary to post some of the lessons I have learned back when I was unable to manage a starter for long periods due to negligence. The bread that I referred to in my first post solely relied on commercial yeast, and we know from that had no sourdough flavor. Second, I tried to just grow the starter from scratch. OOps i had better give you my DEFINITION of a starter.
Starter: is a combination of flower and water stirred together that will be used to mix with bread flour to make your bread.
(How much flour and water to add? whether or not to add yeast? Feeding: how much? which amounts? how often? can you refrigerate? should you? these are all questions I hope to answer for you so you will not have to go through all of my mistakes.)
Back too Starter from scratch....I mixed equal portions of water and flour about a 1/2 cup each (later i learned to decrease amount of water to 1/4 cup) placed in an extememly clean glass measuring cup, atleast 2 cups covered with plastic wrap. I then fed it twice daily. (by removing a 1/4 cup of mixture and adding 1/4 cup of fresh flour and water) At some point in time the amount was suppose to increase or double go from a 1/2 a cup of mixture to a full cup or more thus telling me i had active yeast in my glass container. I would typically forget about long before it ever doubled.
Needless to say this never worked for me now I always add some small amount of commercial yeast to begin the process.
The most important thing I learned in the beginning, is WATER is crucial! Do not use City water even commercial yeast seems to suffer in city water bottled pure water only. If you believe, bottled water is the devil, it is said that you can leave tap water out for 6 hours or more and it will be fine. I have done this with my summer herbs replanted inside but i will probably never mix it with bread. To risky and has cost me a couple of really good loafs before I realized the cause.
So if you want something to due to begin baking bread my first blog bread Sourdough this is what you need to do. You MUST have these items (in my opinion to begin)
STEP ONE: warm 1/2 cup of bottled water(see above) stir 1/2 of one packet of active yeast if it gets frothy(bubly) in five minutes then it is active mix with one cup bread flour in clear container cover with plastic wrap tightly, do not refrigerate, leave on counter.
STEP TWO: remove 1/4 cup of mixture replace with 1/4 cup bread flour 1/8 cup bottled water. every 12 hours until doubled reaches 3 cups or so.
The beginning
Three years ago my wife, when living in Elgin, IL, used to have many meals out. I have always wanted to open my own restaurant and would try to remember what the restaurants we visited did well. One thing that always seemed to go with a great meal was great BREAD.
Then, I began my attempts to bake the perfect bread. I tried a lot of rustic breads etc but none of them hit the spot. Through my research online I found a quick sourdough bread. FYI the words quick and sourdough never go together. When it comes to sourdough quick is 24 hours vs 36 hours but you never really know. Sourdough breads flavor comes from its starter.
I used to work a 60 hr a week job that took away from my ability to remember the daily steps neccesary for bread baking specifically starter growing. In the last year my wife gave birth to our daughter and I left my job to be a Stay at home Dad.
I had no idea what I was getting myself into by choosing, the now popular role, to be a stay at home dad. I will say stay at home parenthood is ideal for BREAD BAKING!!!
Then, I began my attempts to bake the perfect bread. I tried a lot of rustic breads etc but none of them hit the spot. Through my research online I found a quick sourdough bread. FYI the words quick and sourdough never go together. When it comes to sourdough quick is 24 hours vs 36 hours but you never really know. Sourdough breads flavor comes from its starter.
I used to work a 60 hr a week job that took away from my ability to remember the daily steps neccesary for bread baking specifically starter growing. In the last year my wife gave birth to our daughter and I left my job to be a Stay at home Dad.
I had no idea what I was getting myself into by choosing, the now popular role, to be a stay at home dad. I will say stay at home parenthood is ideal for BREAD BAKING!!!
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