bread & science

an attempt at understanding how flour, water, salt and heat interact

[breadandscience]

The crackers were baked for 15 at 425, then taken out of the oven. You then bring the oven temp down to 200, place all crackers straight on the oven rack and let them dry out.

[breadandscience]

Breadcrisps - recipe from the tartine Nō3 book. After fermenting the durum dough overnight, I used a pasta machine to make thin strips. I then placed beet slices and thyme on one half, folded over and carefully stretched it out again using the pasta machine. The beets kept weeping beet-blood and in the end, the strips of dough looked like slices of prosciutto.

[breadandscience]

I’ve been baking my bread at 450, then bringing it down to 400. It seems to be working a little better at that temperature. Not burning the bottom anymore ✌🏽 As for scoring, it seems that how I scored the left loaf didn’t allow for maximum rise. The bands actually worked to restrict the rise.

[breadandscience]

used an old blade accidentally. it caused major friction when I was scoring hence that mess on the left

[breadnscience]

I burned the bottom of both loaves. I always do. But I’ve finally figured out why. My oven is 50 degrees hotter than what it says! Mystery solved.

[breadnscience]

Apart from burning the heck out of the bottom, the loaf on the left turned out pretty good. The loaf on the right had an uneven rise due to some excess parchment paper. I didn’t think the paper would impede the dough from rising, but it totally did. I guess yeast takes the path of least resistance. Both loaves tasted okay. The crumb was pretty open and extremely even.

[breadnscience]

I bake the breads in a dutch oven and once I flip the dough into the hot dutch oven, it’s difficult to score them without burning myself. I decided instead to flip the dough onto parchment, score it and then lower it into the dutch oven. I’m hoping the parchment paper will work out cause I’m sick of burning my wrists :/

[breadnscience]

put it in a place without any breeze, somewhere that has a consistent temperature and voila! all done

[breadnscience]

mix it up real good

[breadnscience]

add 150g of room temp water

[breadnscience]

add 150g of flour (the 50/50 mix)

[breadnscience]

set your scale to 0

[breadnscience]

use, or chuck 90% of the starter

[breadnscience]

to feed the starter you’ll need a scale, 50/50 flour (half wheat, half white) and water