The baking bug


 
Andy Kaminski

Andy Kaminski

TVWBB All-Star
Recently I’ve been learning how to bake.
It is really fun learning about fun things that I don’t know jack about.
I do ok on the really simple things and I often get humbled when I step out of that zone.
I sometimes try to run before I should.
The truth is I haven’t mastered anything yet but I’m still digging it anyways.

Our house is is going into the cold season so our room temperature doesn’t do well for the yeast, so I made a hillbilly proofing box for $30 and an old cooler, out of a seed heater with a thermostat. It is very accurate and it works good.

Yesterday I worked on my baguette skills and meh it was ok.
They tasted good but still have a ways to go presentation wise.
I made 4.
2 were nice and plain but there crust was lacking.
1 had parmesan and garlic with so so crust that had sesame seeds.
1 had a mixture of clams, garlic and Parmesan again so so crust with sesame.
These all tasted good but would only rate 6 out of 10 on a good day probably.
The wifey said my clam, garlic and cheese one tasted better than anything the local specialty baker has sold us so there is that :).
Here some pics.IMG_0853.jpegIMG_3771.jpegIMG_1397.jpegIMG_1398.jpegIMG_3778.jpeg
 

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An old family friend had a rather drafty house and offered the “proofing” tip of turning the oven on for ONE MINUTE, NO MORE!! His use of hand written capital letters for the record. This was way before electronic communication.
I use the method for first rise almost every time. Works very well, second rise? Second? I’ve not done that. As long as I put the loaves in a less drafty environment things seem to be pretty good.
 
The road to perfecting your process is half the fun and most of the learning. If the end product tastes good, that's an added bonus. Are you doing sourdough or yeast bread? I've gotten the best flavor from my sourdough by doing an overnight ferment in the fridge after the initial proofing and have read that it works well for yeast bread too.

After baking sourdough for several years, I always go back to my favorite recipe. It doesn't make a pretty loaf but the flavor more than makes up for that. https://tvwbb.com/threads/sourdough.93842/
 
Thank you for the kind words and encouragement guys.
I really appreciate it.
It is a journey and a fun one.

My plan was to use my sourdough starters (I made 1 local strain, bought a San Francisco strain and my mom gave me one) by now on my baguettes.
It takes me about 6 or so days to build a local sourdough starter out of good flour and water.

My place is too cold to have a good yeast reaction.
It still works but it is slow and I’m too cheap to keep the house heated all the time.
I was using my oven with just its light with a temp probe but that gets over 95 degrees so I COB’ed together that proofing box.
I really like that funny looking box :).

We live on the water up here and have a decent sized tidal zone too.
I can smell that nice (yes nice) sweet smelling low tide and the early fog we get most mornings.
I think our trees even help make that and the shellfish sweet.
I say this because I think our natural microbes might be perfect for some sourdough bread.
It‘s not unlike old San Francisco so it seems like it’s worth trying anyways.

I have done 2 sourdoughs cooks using my starter and that’s like a 2 day process.
With doing the baguettes cooks I just did them on the fly and wanted them impatiently so I used dry yeast.
I am now learning that timing and patience are actually ingredients too :).

I just came back from a trip to California and didn’t feed them for about 10 days so they are still getting out of rehab now.

My last attempt at baguettes (with a tri-tip sammich) and this were done with using dry yeast.
There are some techniques I want to start using like starter, poolish and autolease.
My scoring hopefully will get better soon on these bleeping baguettes I think a 20 minute trip to the freezer might help a bit and also hopefully soon I will get that nice rich semi shiny brown/golden color I been lacking.

I originally came up with the clam, garlic and cheese baguette idea in a dream.
That dream still needs a bit of work but I’m going to put that idea on a shelf for a while while I figure out how to make these regular baguettes make me proud.
 
Andy Kaminski said:
Thank you for the kind words and encouragement guys.
I really appreciate it.
It is a journey and a fun one.

My plan was to use my sourdough starters (I made 1 local strain, bought a San Francisco strain and my mom gave me one) by now on my baguettes.
It takes me about 6 or so days to build a local sourdough starter out of good flour and water.

My place is too cold to have a good yeast reaction.
It still works but it is slow and I’m too cheap to keep the house heated all the time.
I was using my oven with just its light with a temp probe but that gets over 95 degrees so I COB’ed together that proofing box.
I really like that funny looking box :).

We live on the water up here and have a decent sized tidal zone too.
I can smell that nice (yes nice) sweet smelling low tide and the early fog we get most mornings.
I think our trees even help make that and the shellfish sweet.
I say this because I think our natural microbes might be perfect for some sourdough bread.
It‘s not unlike old San Francisco so it seems like it’s worth trying anyways.

I have done 2 sourdoughs cooks using my starter and that’s like a 2 day process.
With doing the baguettes cooks I just did them on the fly and wanted them impatiently so I used dry yeast.
I am now learning that timing and patience are actually ingredients too :).

I just came back from a trip to California and didn’t feed them for about 10 days so they are still getting out of rehab now.

My last attempt at baguettes (with a tri-tip sammich) and this were done with using dry yeast.
There are some techniques I want to start using like starter, poolish and autolease.
My scoring hopefully will get better soon on these bleeping baguettes I think a 20 minute trip to the freezer might help a bit and also hopefully soon I will get that nice rich semi shiny brown/golden color I been lacking.

I originally came up with the clam, garlic and cheese baguette idea in a dream.
That dream still needs a bit of work but I’m going to put that idea on a shelf for a while while I figure out how to make these regular baguettes make me proud.
Click to expand...
Always glad to hear about new techniques. Regardless of how long you've been doing something, there's always more to learn.

If your starter is strong, don't worry about letting it sit for weeks between feedings. You will lose out on all of the things you can do with the discards, but the starter will mature and get used to being neglected.
 
This is a great thread. Andy, nice job and thanks for starting it.

Jim Forkish's book really helped me, especially regarding time and temp as ingredients.

Sour dough intimidates me. My rustic loaves are good, but I've yet to up my game with starter and poolish. That needs to change. Love your post!!
 
The starters are easy enough Tim.
I did that before I got his book.
Thanks for the recommendation I am still reading it.

I use organic dark rye wheat and water on a 1 to 1 ratio.
I added a drop of our honey to it and that helped it.
No one mentions honey but it makes sense to me anyways.

I’m gonna figure out a cook later today for maybe tomorrow.
I saw a cool recipe on bbq’ed dough on a Weber.
I figure that would go great with anything and I could toss it on while the meat was resting.
 
I loved reading about your dive into baking, Andy, keep it up! Fresh, homemade bread (with commercial yeast or a starter) is such a satisfying thing to make and eat! We rarely buy any bread products around here, as I've added to my arsenal of things I can make as time has gone on. Bread makes an absolutely wonderful give, too. You have already figured out the key parameters to any fermentation are time and temp, and it's fun to manipulate what you are doing with those two factors and see how it changes your bread. Please post pics of future successes (and even failures.....tons to learn from those!)

FWIW, your baguettes look WAY better than the first ones I made, so great start on those!

R
 
Andy Kaminski said:
The starters are easy enough Tim.
I did that before I got his book.
Thanks for the recommendation I am still reading it.

I use organic dark rye wheat and water on a 1 to 1 ratio.
I added a drop of our honey to it and that helped it.
No one mentions honey but it makes sense to me anyways.

I’m gonna figure out a cook later today for maybe tomorrow.
I saw a cool recipe on bbq’ed dough on a Weber.
I figure that would go great with anything and I could toss it on while the meat was resting.
Click to expand...
Thanks, Andy.
 
I finally put my homemade sourdough starter to work last night and just took these two loaves out.
It was kinda time consuming but it was more fun than not.
The one on the left is from a smaller oval mold and the one from the right is a big round mold.
Since I was making two I filled the smaller one up with garlic, cheese and rosemary.
I also figured it would be the one that would turn out wonky looking but it looks better than my plain big one.
They do have that nice SF sour flavor I was looking for so that’s a win.
I still have some bugs to work out but I’m getting there.
Like the rookie that’s never been there before I cut one open too soon.
I also caught 4 Dungies today so it’s going to be a nice crab and sourdough dinner tonight.
 

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Looking great, Andy! With more loaves, you will build skills and experience that will help you tweak how you do it to arrive at the end result you want. In the meantime, the loaves that you make will all be taste experiments! Looks like your starter is pretty good to go, and it will get stronger as it gets a bit older. Keep it up!

If you are at all so inclined, you might pop in to thefreshloaf.com. It's an online community very similar to this one that is bread focused. There are tons of extremely experienced, and super helpful folks out there. Even just searching for specific things you want to learn, try, or understand better is a great way to learn more.

I've got 12 loaves to make tomorrow along with about 40 English Muffins, so my starter is putting in a lot of work over the next couple of days! :)

Rich
 
Thank you Rich and Jim that means a lot.
I have been lurking and reading at thefreshloaf.com.

After the bread cooled for dinner it tasted even better.
It was just amazing sour goodness with near perfect crust for my liking, just a tad dark on the bottom but that’s an easy fix from my readings.
The crumb was nice and springy after it cooled down.
I know the crumb needs improvement but it wasn't overly dense or tight.

I think I’d rate the crumb 6.5 - 7 out of 10 on a good day and maybe 7.5 for the crust.
Think I should have gotten more rise and I can work on those improvements.
 
Andy Kaminski said:
Thank you Rich and Jim that means a lot.
I have been lurking and reading at thefreshloaf.com.

After the bread cooled for dinner it tasted even better.
It was just amazing sour goodness with near perfect crust for my liking, just a tad dark on the bottom but that’s an easy fix from my readings.
The crumb was nice and springy after it cooled down.
I know the crumb needs improvement but it wasn't overly dense or tight.

I think I’d rate the crumb 6.5 - 7 out of 10 on a good day and maybe 7.5 for the crust.
Think I should have gotten more rise and I can work on those improvements.
Click to expand...
Andy, my brother is at about the same point as you (I dried some of my starter, and sent it to him.) He has made two, 2-loaf batches thus far, both were great with things he wants to improve. If you haven't found it already, another good place to read up about making sourdough is theperfectloaf.com. Maurizio is a prolific baker, and recently released his first bread cookbook of the same name. I like his writing style, and the somewhat measured, scientific approach he takes to his bread formulas.

Bake on!

R
 
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