Viewer Mail: Dense Bread - Part 1 of 2

An occassional series here at the weber_cam is when we answer the mail in the form of a post because of its general significance. This is directed to the baking community. This person will remain anonymous but let's just say the mail is from our north; the place with cheap prescription drugs - but that's all I'm saying. It's just a Q&A regarding what I believe to be one of the best beginning books for making artisan loaves, Dan Leader's, his poolish recipe for "Country Homestyle-Hearth Loaf".

Her initial message (I lost, unfortunately) said her first attempt came out kind of dense. She needed some pointers. Here's the exchange:

---

First I gave some general comments (that I believe to be useful):

1. Baking even as much as once a day, you and I could never get the reproducibility that a baker gets who bakes hundreds to thousands of loaves a day. I say that only before saying something as painful as "just try it again".

2. Generally, let's go quickly through the steps and I'll make some pointers to keep an eye on:

• The flour. Dan Leader uses a flour composed of 80:20 white:wheat. I use a smaller fraction of wheat and it's often mixed with rye. I don't like most wheat flours but wheat and rye make for very healthy fermentations. Your loaves made from a poolish should always include at least a little wheat and/or rye. The other flour recommendation I have is I absolutely HATE King Arthur unbleached white. I tried for years to like it and still don't. It just has bad flavor. Don't know what to say. ANY other unbleached white should be fine.
• Poolish. The observations and procedure in the book are spot-on. Your observations at the point of the poolish should be the same.
• My difference from Leader is I simply use a larger fraction of poolish in the final dough. Leader uses around 120 grams poolish, 300 grams water and 500 grams flour - I use 300 grams poolish, 300 grams water and 500 grams flour. I think this is actually a small variation.
• The first rise. The poolish is done, toss in the rest of the ingredients and let it rise. If you let one rise go long, it's this one. Four hours isn't too much. It may appear to be nearly unrisen too. Its appearance at this stage is deceptive.
• The second rise. This doesn't have to be more than 30 minutes but is pretty flexible on time.
• The final rise - called the proof. This is the most critical part of the entire proccess. You form it into a loaf and let it rise. When it's risen ENOUGH, it's docked (slashed on top) and tossed into the oven. If it rises too much, when it hits the oven it will get no "oven spring", deflate and the result will be a tad dense - sometimes cakelike. If you bake it too early, it will get better oven spring, it won't deflate in the oven, but will come out a tad dense - again, cake-like and tight crumb.
• During the first rise, I mentioned it may look like a slack limp lump. When you punch it for the second rise (the more brief one) you SHOULD notice it rise significantly more in that 30 minutes than it did in the previous several hour period. IF YOU OBSERVE THIS, things are going well. If this is indeed the case and until you become more comfortable with the final rise - do the final proof for 30-40 minutes. Slightly underproofing is a far better mistake to make than over proofing.

3. Addressing your specific concerns:

"I just bought the book and tried to make the Country Homestyle-Hearth Loaf, but it didn't quite turn out as I'd hoped. It was delicious, but it didn't rise much."

See above general comments.

"I prefer my bread light and airy"

I do too. That is always what I aspire for - even artisan wheats should be light rather than the earthy crunchy and dense. Those are vile.

"Did I not knead it enough, or did I overknead it?"

I can say with confidence you DID NOT overknead. My machine kneads a loaf for a full 30 minutes. I don't think so much is necessary and you don't need a machine - it's just something I find handy.

"Should I have added more yeast, since I'm just starting out at the bread making thang and probably don't have enough wild yeast cells in my kitchen?"

A little extra (1/4 t) can never hurt. But for the poolish, stick to the recommended 1/4 teaspoon. For the final dough boost to a teaspoon. Could help quite a bit.

"One other thing - Dan's straight-dough method. In Chapter 7 he says that all of the recipes in Chapter 6 can be made the straight-dough way without the poolish, and says to just mix them all together. Does that mean you are only supposed to use the "final dough" amounts in the Chapter 6 recipes, or should you also add the amounts (yeast, water, and flour) given for the originally intended poolish?"

He means add the poolish ingredients and dough ingredients. A note of caution though. Straight doughs that are unenriched (little/no fat or sweetener) are exceptionally challenging. The baguette recipe linked on my sidebar is something I've worked on for about 10 years and it's absolutely awesome but can fail - and the lack of reproducibility kills me. I'll work on it till I die. I think the easiest and most reliable loaf I make "American Style Wheat" also linked on my sidebar.

"Thanks alot if you get the time to respond to this."

I LOVE talking bread. I will never be too busy to respond to questions, just give good detail and we'll take it from there. I may take a while to get back but I'll definitely get back when I get a chance.

Good luck and be persistent.

Kettle Corn Fine Tuning

Like Prison Pete, Martha Stewart is publishing from the slammer. Her recipe for popped corn simply uses 1T oil (she uses olive oil, this is wrong) and 1/2 cup kernels. I just tried these relative amounts with the addition of 1T sugar and it worked wonderfully. I used a 3 1/2 qt. non stick sauce pan as in a recent post. I think a big part of it is: let it go. Don't remove the heat source till the popping nearly stops; it's tempting to stop early. Not exactly disasterous but this results in many unpopped kernels. So if you're not having good runs, keep trying, it's worth it. Martha's publication, Everday Food is linked on the sidebar and it's great for fast preps.

ps: I now appreciate Martha more than ever. It's just lousy she's in the slammer and the rat bastards of Enron still are walking the street.

Master Recipe for Kettle Korn
1. To a 3 1/2 qt sauce pan (I use non stick, don't think it matters, cast iron is not right, retains too much heat and can burn some of the popped corn) add 1T vegetable or soy oil.
2.Place 2 "test" kernels of popcorn in the oil (I use generic white) and place pot over highest heat, covered.
3. While waiting for the test kernels to pop, prepare 1/2C of kernels and add to it 1T sugar and wait for the test kernels to pop.
4. Just after both test kernels pop, remove lid and pour the kernels and sugar into pan and quickly cover with lid; maintain high heat throughout the entire process.
5. When popping starts (within about 30 seconds) jostle pan approximately every 15 seconds to make sure unpopped kernels sift to the bottom of the pan (to the heat). It's tough to say how long this will take because everyone's stove is different. I use a 14,000 btu burner and it takes about a minute for full popping to occur.
6. Once popping has almost completely ceased, remove the pan from heat and dump in bowl.
7. Lightly salt and enjoy. The 1/2 cup kernels just perfectly filled the 3 1/2 qt saucepan I used.

So Long Our Baby

It took me about a month to write this one.

Conspicuously absent from this site is anything about beer making. It's not a mistake. I'm an opinionated chemist with manufacturing experience and I brew my own way and have no desire to share (damn it). I'm an extract guy; I'm process-oriented and make some darn good ale and I don't have the energy or desire to combat the all-grain naysayers. So I don't. My family, friends and I like the brew and that's all that matters.

When Francesca Rose came home from the hospital, I brewed a batch of ale. It was a ridiculous act conducted in a fit of sleep-deprived mania to convince myself things would still be the same.

I have never been more wrong in my entire life.

Life has changed for us and it's much better than it was. A bit more challenging but better in ways we couldn't possibly have imagined. The sad part is the batch is just about finished and I can't bring myself to take the last sip from an almost empty keg. The ale in the keg is just about gone and she's not a baby anymore.

My Newest Food Find - FoodNerd

Food Nerd is the newest food blog to catch my attention. The particular post, Escarole and Cannelini Beans (which we bulked up a tad with chicken and paired it with crusty bread and a few slivers of reggiano) was unbelievable. We had it last night. I never realized escarole, with its relatively soft leaves would do well when cooked. I thought it would sog-out like spinach, but it's robust. It's the simple recipes like this one, that keep me coming back to food blogs. The little guy does have something to contribute. We now have a new staple meal. Something we can make easily, quickly and still have time to play with the kid. Thanks Food Nerd (and she's from Boston).

Dave's Rotten Stinking Wine

Several readers have asked about my recent adventure into wine. And they kept asking. And asking. And they won't go away. So we're coming clean. Deep down we're scientists damn it and we're not afraid of failure. We fail often, but we learn from it.

The crew here at Dave's Beer are an adventurous bunch. We routinely make damn good ale that we'd easily match with the best commercial ales. We laughed at the potential difficulties of making our own wine.

But this project served only one purpose. It made two buck chuck taste like a Chateau Lafitte. It was vile. The Weber_cam is a happy place and a detailed description of the result of this pursuit would not be appropriate here. This subdomain gets more traffic than the whole site and we fear some children may occassionally read this.

We're just hoping the city doesn't slap a fine on us for dumping it into the sewer system.

Goodbye Fresh Tomatoes

Second only to pasta and grains, tomatoes are a favorite staple in our house year-round. Even Suzi likes them. From October to June we have no choice but canned (Dei Fratelli is are our current favorite brand). The only reason for eating grocery store tomatoes during the off season is it makes the home grown, freshly-harvested tomatoes from the garden that much more perfect.

Our favorite dish from July to September is hot pasta tossed with diced FRESH RIPE tomatoes, with finely sliced fresh basil (thanks K & E!!), good quality olive oil, a tiny bit of sliced garlic and salt and pepper. The hot pasta is tossed and the residual heat is enough to just barely cook the tomatoes. The mixture is allowed to sit for up to 20 minutes (very convenient for toddlers). During this time the flavors blend. We eat it slightly warm and topped with finely shredded reggiano (and of course, a crust of bread). It's a decadent treat that only comes 3 months a year. We look forward to it.

La Baguette: The Proof

My Baguette is the most often baked bread in our house but, historically, it's not been the most reproducible. Each parameter seems critical.

I once took a statistical experimental design short course. I forgot most of what I learned because I don't use it anymore. In fact, my current profession only requires me to use an organ grinder and tincup for donations of loose change. But that's another whole thing.

When I did learn it, the first application (other than for chemical reaction scale-up, my previous career) I thought I would try is with this loaf but there were simply too many parameters and the dependent variable - the outcome - was too difficult to numerically characterize. What I do recall is when planning the design, you need to know boundary conditions of the independent variables; extreme values for each parameter. Using either of these extreme values would cause a failure and optimization would provide a value somewhere between these two extremes.

This long-winded discussion brings me to the value for the final proof time for this straight and fast dough. The final proof is probably the most critical part of any baked loaf of bread. Too long and it hits the oven, sinks and comes out dense; too short and it gets good oven spring but still comes out dense. However, this isn't my profession and experimentation with this value can mean my family gets a lousy loaf of bread. I have to be careful when I do my experimentation. My currently written recommendation for the final proof is 20-25 minutes for the Baguette. Last night, I decided to go dangerously close to what I guessed to be the lower limit of the final proof, 15 minutes. Oops, Frankie needed a diaper change at 12 minutes. I docked the loaf, tossed it in, threw in a shot of steam and dutifully went to change the diaper.

WOW! What an awesome result. Great oven spring, good crust, good volume, good color, just awesome. I think I established a new lower limit for the final proof parameter.

Kettle Corn Emergency

We here at DavesBeer.com take viewer mail quite seriously and also happen to pride ourselves in the level of detail we communicate during our culinary pursuits. A reader said she tried to make Kettle Corn using our method and failed. However, she used a Le Creuset (beautiful cookware) but probably too heavy-duty for this application. I suggested a lighter weight, non-stick pan and she got a lot of unpopped and burned kernels.

Totally unacceptable. We're sorry. We take full responsibility and will refund your money immediately.

In the meantime, I did another run Saturday night while watching a movie about a place I'm familiar with.

What I did this time
I repeated my procedure linked above but made a few more measurements and tried to increase the batch size. I used a 3 1/2 qt. sauce pan with loose fitting lid and added 30 grams of canola oil (2 1/2 T) and placed it with my two test kernels on top of a full-blast 14,000 BTU gas burner and fumbled to find the lid (and then put the lid on). It took a good 2 minutes till I heard the first kernel pop and an additional 20 seconds for the second. I then dumped in 1/3 C kernels (white corn, generic brand) and 1 T white sugar, put the lid back on and waited for popping to commence while the heat was still full blast. Things started going in about 20 seconds and took over a minute to fully pop. During this period I left it on the burner and only jostled it a few times during the entire period. BUT, fearful of burning (from my reader's findings), I pulled the batch off while I still heard popping. I then quickly dumped it from the hot saucepan into a waiting bowl and lightly salted it. It clumps a bit at the beginning and as it cools, it becomes more brittle and easily breaks up. Note: Many of the dimensions here were measured. In the previous post, I estimated and guessed.

Results
The quality was excellent. T had more than half and Suzi wasn't interested. The yield was low though; lots of unpopped kernels but no burned ones. I became timid at the end.

I think this has to be done with really, really high heat in a pan that heats and cools quickly. My next expt on this will make use of a cheap, thin aluminum (not non-stick) pan that I have yet to find (Goodwill).

Don't know if this will help but email me again and we'll figure it out. It's worth it.

Follower of the Toasted Marshmallow

I don't follow a religion to find peace, but if I did, it would involve toasting marshmallows.

I had never toasted them over a fire before. Honest. I learned quickly though and then became obsessed. There are apparently as many preferences in the way marshmallows are done as there are ways bagels can be cheesed - and everyone's preference is the ONLY correct one.

My tactic involved heating the marshmallow until it was uniformly warm inside; an endpoint only gleaned from experience. The appearance helps also. As it puffs, it acquires a type of tiled appearance. Once warm, the marshmallow is lowered closer to the flame to achieve the final browning.

Browning - not blackening.

But, this is the tricky part. Once the marshmallow begins to brown, it loses its hold on the marshmallow stick (another post entirely). Balancing this browning with the weakening grip is the final stage of achieving the perfect treat. Just as it's slightly brown, puffed and hot you must eat it right off the stick. While contemplating the joy of this treat though, you have to start on the next one. It is totally addictive.

Let me know your marshmallow preferences in the comments.
(I recently altered the font size in the comments; should be easier to read now.)

Kettle Corn Lite

I recently broke what I consider to be the cardinal rule of weekend parenting. When the kid naps, rest. This past Sunday, when Frankie napped, I mowed the lawn. In fact, I figured out that my lawn mower (it's a crappy manual push thing) can be adjusted and I mowed it AGAIN. If my lawn were a 14-year old that just had its hair cut, it wouldn't have gone to school the next day. It was mowed that short. Needless, I was a bit tired and settled in for a rest once I sheared my lawn. My rest lasted a good 5 minutes before she woke up.

What in the hell does this have to do with kettle corn?

A while back, I described a method of making my own kettle corn using a funky popcorn popper. Turns out it's even easier, better, lighter in calories and finally - this is where it relates to parenting - is a treat that will keep a toddler in place for more than 35 seconds.

Kettle Corn
My instrument of choice this time: a non stick 3 1/2 quart deep sauce pan. I poured in enough vegetable oil to almost cover the bottom and two test kernels, put the flame on the highest setting on the stove top and covered it. Waiting for the test kernels to pop, I prepared a 1/4 cup of kernels (generic stuff, white corn) and poured over this about a tablespoon of sugar. When the test kernels popped, I dumped in the 1/4 cup measure of kernels and sugar. When the popping commenced, I gently jostled the pan while holding the lid on (to let the unpopped kernels go back to the bottom). Within about 20 or seconds, the popping ceased, I removed the lid and dumped the fluffy nuggets of goodness into a bowl and lightly salted them. Once cooled, the kid and I had our treat. That other gizmo is very cool but kind of silly for this application.

Elephant Ears

Last night, Trish got the urge to make some Elephant Ears. Having just received a trial size sample of some instant active dry yeast from a co-worker (thanks Larry), it seemed like a good place to put it to use. Trish made the dough, I shaped them and she cooked them - all while keeping the kid from harm's way. It's a really slack dough, almost batter-like. In the first image are the balls of dough that were separated and patted into ca. 6" discs. Had to use a ton of flour to work with these things or they'd stick. Then, we dropped them in the Fry Baby and finally coated them with cinnamon and sugar. Frankie absolutely loved them. They were a little like donuts, the delicate kind - not the crunchy cake ones. They were incredibly tasty and MUCH better than we'd had at the state fair. Yes, they're a tad high fat so we won't be doing these often, but it was a fun activity. And, yes, Suzi-q got her share too. And some of Frankie's as well.

Figs

We live in Columbus, OH. Not Sicily. But, a few doors down, a Sicilian neighbor of ours works quite hard to take care of his fig tree, which originated in Sicily. The first crop was harvested last night and we were among the few lucky recipients of the bounty. Trish and Frankie love them. Depicted is one of the figs cut in half. They're purple on the outside, soft, very ripe and sweet. They are heavenly.

I found a site called Adriano's Figtrees, Etc.; it's a site about cultivating fig trees in northern climates. According this site, I think the fig we generously received is called a Bifara (Italian Purple, A large sweet fig with strawberry pulp). My neighbor's going to give me a sprig to start my own. In the meantime, I'll be reading on their care and cultivation. These are too good not to have every year.

Crushed Grains

A few years ago I bought what I thought was a grain mill at a homebrew store. I wanted a mill with knurled wheels that could crush grain. This device does that but it was completely inappropriate for malted barley and its related cousins. Basically, the wheels are too close and it crushes the grain too much, almost into flour.

I found another grain mill for beer malts but kept this one anyway. Someone later informed me it's called a flaker (rather than a mill). It's got a few thickness settings and eventually gets the grains crushed into a very coarse powder. Shown here is a collection of rye berries, wheat berries and flax seed that have been crushed (several times through the finest setting). I can do several hundred grams in about 10 minutes. It's strictly low output. To make some really grainy breads, I substitute 1/3 of the total amount of flour with whole grain. I'll show you an example in the next post.

Parmesan Herbed Biscuits

The other night, while preparing our usual meal in 20 minutes or less, I really had a desire for some fresh bread but just hadn't enough time. Then I thought about the possibility of biscuits. We usually have biscuits for breakfast but I changed a few things to bring them into the savory dinner realm. I made a small batch that had grated parmesan and dried oregano. Including preheating the oven, I think they took about 25 minutes. It's not a good photo but they look pretty cool. The dark flecks are browned cheese I believe.

Parmesan Herbed Biscuits
Makes four biscuits.

1 cup self-rise flour (contains salt and b. powder)
1/4 cup sweet butter
milk, ca. 1/3 cup
parmesan reggiano, grated, 1/4 cup
dried oregano, 1 T

The oven is preheated to 450F. Butter is cut into self rise flour and the resulting powder is mixed with cheese and herbs. This is mixed with milk using a wooden spoon until all the solids form into a single mass. This is dumped onto the counter and kneaded a few times, squashed into a 7-8" disc and cut into 4 pieces and placed on a parchment-lined sheet. The biscuits are then painted with additional milk and baked till brown, about 15 minutes. Yum.