Tried to combine the no-knead, bake in pot method with the overnight prove in fridge method last night. Recipe was simple white sourdough - 150 ml starter, 500 gm flour, 300 ml water and 1 tspn salt. Then
Mix for 30 sec by hand and leave alone for 30 min
Fold twice every 30 min for 3 hrs
Shape, place in Banneton in plastic bag and straight into fridge
Next morning, metal camp oven in oven at 250C
Dough slid into camp oven without any warming, no slashes
Baked 250C for 30 min with lid on, then 225C for 20 min with lid off
Bread is delightful with seriously chewy crust. Amount of work involved was minimal
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Slashing would help prevent the tearout your loaf experienced and may even improve your oven spring. Nice looking loaf and the process certainly is straight forward and not doesn't take a lot of time.
paul
agreed. I was really just trying to find out what I could achieve with the most minimal effort. I will try a quick slash next time - Would I be right in thinking that slashes in a cold stiff dough are more likely to stay open?
The overnight retard certainly makes the timing a lot easier.
I don't know how much of an effect the cold dough would have on slashing (I would think it would have some) but it has been my experience that the depth of cut and angle of the lame or knife has the greatest affect on the slashes staying open.
I agree that the overnight retard makes it much easier to control the timing. As a matter of fact, I have been working with a formula from Peter Reinhart's "Artisan Bread Every Day" for French bread where you mix the dough and retard the primary fermentation in the refrigerator overnight or up to four days. You can mix a large batch of dough and put it in the refrigerator and only remove and bake what you need each day.
I use the same quantities and process for my loafes, just sometimes I don't have time to fold so many times !
Great bread !
I've made bread that way at home and at work, with or without the refrigerator part and I think it's a great process.
Some of the old timers felt that mechanical kneading incorporated too much oxygen into a dough and changed the nature of the fermentation. Time can accomplish full development of a dough and allow for flavors to mature.
It took me a long time to understand that development is as much a chemical change as a physical one, and while I won't pretend to know what happens on the molecular level I am sure that there's more than one way to skin the development cat, so to speak.
I agree too that the coup will allow the bread to expand better in the oven- slash away! Yes, a cold stiff dough's slashes are less likely to heal themselves, and with soft doughs, especially those which have been overmixed and broken down a little (bad deal in every way, but it happens) it seems to be very important to wait until the last minute to make the cuts, and to get the freshly cut loaf into the oven at once. At work we can get a lot of steam into the oven right away too, so much, in fact, that the pressure pushes the oven door against the latch and excess steam escapes noisily under the door, and moisture condenses visibly on the bread and rack.
On batards and baguettes I like to make the cut "across" rather than "into" the loaf- sort of like peeling a thick-skinned orange- and on boules I prefer a fairly deep cut down into the loaf and I do like the big cross hatch over the little- just a personal preference. I make one cut the length of a batard, four or five on a 22" long baguette, and three by three on a round. All one pound finished weight loaves.
All just FWIW.
Another experiment - this time with an hour out of the fridge post bulk fermentation and an hour out while the oven and cast iron pot warm up. Slashes still healing almost immediately but oven spring excellent. It tastes fabulous.
That's a beautiful loaf of bread and is sure to be delicious. I'm jealous.
Sometimes a solution to the slashes sticking back together is to mold the loaf in two or three pieces. Lay the pieces together in the banneton to rise in the hope that they won't glue themselves back together too well. Not the same as a proper coup with a lovely smile and teeth, but very nice anyhow. And sometimes when I'm having the problem I'll try to carry a little of the flour into the coup with the lame.
Also seems to help if the loaf is not fully proofed before it goes into the oven, so that there's lots of tension trying to push the interior of the loaf against the skin- often you'll see the coup open up politely right as you cut them.
When we bake our baguette and batards we make up the dough (it's a pain au levain and has a lot of age, and is also fermented quite cold, down around 70 F or lower both in the overnight poolish and in the dough stage) and get it right in the retarder, where it sits for several hours or overnight. We've made the mistake of closing the cabinet once or twice and it made the dough very sticky and hard to cut, and the cuts all healed at once. We've also made the mistake of letting it rise outside the retarder, and it gets too soft to cut well.
So when we take our bread to the oven it's cold, old, and a little dry and not fully proofed. (I get that way myself sometimes too ...) We preheat the oven to its maximum, which is 525 F, while we cut the bread, which takes ten or fifteen minutes for the 50 to 80 loaves, and then preset the oven controlls to deliver steam for 10 seconds and allow the temperature to drop to 480 F, which it does at once when the steam kicks on, and then we set the timer for 18 to 21 minutes, depending on the size of the load. It really kicks, i.e., has lots of oven spring and opens up the loaves through the coups.
I'll try to upload some photos to Kodak or Photobucket and link some them.
:-)M
ps- we use the term "proofed" over "proved" and I don't know why. Usually done in a "proof box". So if I confuse I'm sorry- it's just what I'm used to!
Just a question Muff, when you refer to "Not the same as a proper coup with a lovely smile and teeth", are you talking about the "gringe"? Just different teminology?
K.
Hi, K.
Yes, you're right. What it is is that I couldn't remember the correct, French way to say it, so I translated! My French is not just bad, but early non-existent, so instead of googling "gringne" and "dent" I improvised ... I couldn't remember whether it should be "le" of "la" and so on.
I should be clear that I have only limited, largely self-taught experience with this particular form of baking, although I've been a commercial baker all my adult life, and I'm nearing retirement. Problem is, much of the baking I do is just routine production stuff and although challenging in its own way, not particularly inspiring. I spent a few hours at Wheatfields in Lawrence, KS, when Thom Leonard was running it, and was privileged to work a shift at the Acme in Berkeley a few years ago, but most of my day to day experience with levains is limited to a few dozen loaves a day, and we do our best to make each like the one before it- not much experimentation.
Of what we do I feel pretty good about it, but it has real limitations, and that's that.
Best,
Muff
ps- I'm also discovering that I don't really understand how to use this forum, and I may miss things from time to time. So please be patient while I get past the learning permit phase. :-)