Sunday - March 15, 2020

Give Us This Day

I made up a recipe I found online in the comments area of a post somebody had made about autolyse. That’s a bread baking thing where you mix just the flour and the water then let it sit for a while. This breaks down the flour and makes a smoother bread. It was one of these “no knead” recipes that has a really large amount of water in it - “high hydration” - that is supposed to give you a big open artisanal crumb. In other words, big air bubbles in the loaf. It’s a retarded autolysed sourdough, which means most of the rise is done overnight in the fridge.

I’ve managed to talk our new bowling teammate, Mrs. Newbie, into baking bread. She’s a good cook, and is willing to give it a whack. She’s made two loaves so far, so I’m hoping. I sent her pictures, saying how sometimes you make a brick, because I consider this loaf a failure. It didn’t rise much, there wasn’t any oven spring, and the cold oven baking method did not create the nicely browned and super crispy crust I’m used to. Nor was the crumb anything spectacular. OTOH, the dough has a little rye flour in it, so it tastes really good. She texted back that the loaf looks real good to her. Well sure; she’s just a beginner so she’s at the start of the learning curve. I might pass this recipe on to her, because it’s really pretty darn easy to make. However, sourdough is tricksy, and the autolyse seems to speed up fermentation. So mine came out over-proofed, which is why I call it a brick. But a good recipe turns out tasty bread even when the method is not the best.

I’m going to diddle the recipe a bit, and try it with all the flours autolysed together, instead of just the bread flour. Also I’ll bake it in a hot Dutch oven, not the author’s cold one. And if that works out, I’ll try it a third time with AP instead of rye, because not everybody has rye flour on hand. Except for breadheads like me ... I think I’ve got 7 kinds of flour sitting in the closet.

Posted by Drew458     on 03/15/2020 at 07:16 PM   
Filed Under: • Bread • Food •  
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