Poolish boules

Upper: poolish after 18 hours, bubbly with creases
Below: after mixing
Below: after first folding
Below: after 2nd folding
bench resting after preliminary shaping

Into the bannetons for proofing [all RT]
The finished products: the crumb was yellowish and chewy. Crust not quite as crisp as I'd like but thin and flavourful. Interior has big holes and lots of character

Did it by the book as much as possible
My version

Pain a l'ancienne

Pain a l'ancienne; Peter Reinhart's "The Bread Baker's Apprentice" version.

Made a chilled dough with 80% water, retarded overnight, took about 4 hours to double today at RT, then "shaped" the very wet doughs and followed the recipe and gave no real final proof -- not my instincts to do this -- and the surface did look under-proofed. I think next time I will make the ciabatta variant and give the "shaped" doughs a further bench rise before baking.

Other than that; spectacular; chewy yellowish kinda sweetish crumb [not like added sugar or "evaporated cane juice" (mostly sugar) sweetened] but very subtle, and a crispy flavorful crust, just the ants pants and really easy to make [I'm sure it's much easier the second time around]. Could have baked a touch cooler too.

Next day -- Barley batards

Similar recipe -- plus 2% extra dry gluten -- double bulk ferment; may have been too much as there wasn't much lift in the proofer. Still got some additional oven-spring today. Tried the "new" steam arrangement; ala Brother Juniper's, bought a garden sprayer an spritzed the doughs on entering the oven and at 2, 4, 6, and 16 minutes of baking.

These were smaller loaves, scaled at 700 g and baked 20 min @ 200 deg C and 10 min at 150 deg C. They look and smell great, can't wait for them to cool. The dough is weird to handle, not very gassy and somewhat plastic; resting seems to give no advantage in moulding. I have great trouble keeping the seam together, even if I wet it first before sealing it. Still, the oven spring filled most of the gaps :-)


OK -- cool enough to cut and eat -- scrumptious, crispy thin crust, great flavor, although there is a hint of bitterness with this much whole-grain barley -- very slight -- just the call with blackberry preserve. Nice crumb structure shows there was some oven lift.

Barley Wheat bread mark 1

50% hull-less waxy barley stone-ground with only coarse bran sieved out plus 50% "Titan" high-gluten HRS baker's flour. 170 g rye sour and 0.25% SAF instant yeast. Rose nicely but slowly, did double in bulk fermentation and again in proofer. Not much oven lift but some. Very dense bread, very flavorful, with uniquely soft moist crumb from the waxy starch in the barley. Crust is a bit over baked even with early steam [205C for 45 min left center only ~ 65 deg C -- needed a further 30 min @ 150 deg C for the center to cook --just cause it was so dense and a fairly big loaf -- scaled at ~ 1250 g]
My rye sour after a week -- 6 feeds and the weekend in the fridge -- the top inch or so has no bubbles 'cause it has collapsed from the highest point it rose to overnight. It smells great.

Last week's breads

Tuesday's bread -- half wholewheat
Fermenting nicely
Ready to punch -- a beautiful dough -- about 3500 g
proofed in a banneton with rice flour lining
nice chewy crumb, pretty even for hand molded
Wednesday's Bread
Woops - - forgot it a little too long -- used a "biga" from the day previous's pita bread dough
Not too bad, good crackling musical crust
Crumb had dark and light patches maybe a little too yeasty [the biga had a lot of yeast but it was retarded overnight]. But really nice and chewy and even OK 4 or 5 days later [toasted]

Naesten den aegte dansk surdejs rugbrød -- getting there -- a bit small, a scaling issue. This is a Faerøsk recipe and was really simple but still took 3 days to make. Have not got the oven down yet, the crust is still a bit too baked, but certainly baked right through [150 deg C for 1 hr then 175 deg C for 1.5 hrs and then leave bread in the cooling oven 2 hrs] I think i should have kept the lids on the pullman tins for the last section. Still tastes great and wonderful chocolaty aromas

Monday bread - very nice chewy crumb

70 percent water

Formula

-Flour:

1300 g HWW "Gary" white flour

700 g FRESHLY MILLED atta flour from the hard-white cultivar Winsome

500 g HWW "Bauermeister" white flour

flour temp 19 deg C

-- TOTAL 2500 g / 100%

-Water 44 deg C

1750 g – 70% -- wet sticky mess -- was handleable with dusting after fermentation and floor time

-Saf instant yeast added directly to flour 20 g / 0.7%
-Salt 30 g / ~12%

Process

Mixed 10 minutes on speed 2 in 20 quart hobart. folded and rounded on bench

Fermented 60 minutes @ 30 deg C

Divided into ~750 g pieces

Proofed 60 minutes @ 25 deg C

Baked 30 minutes for baguettes free in oven, 40 for bread in la cloche with last 10 min without the bell.

Preheated oven to 220 deg C, turned down to 200 deg C when doughs loaded in oven.

Nice bread; good crumb, bit more open structure, nice crusts but not baked hot enough early to be crispy.

The stone mill in "action"

Dough half mixed

Dough nearly mixed

Ready for oven after 60 min proofing

Bread baked without a cover but with steam

Bread baked with the la cloche cover for the first 30 of 40 min baking