Bread thread

that's extremely open crumb

its 90% bread flour with 10% whole wheat, and the bread flour is unbleached so i wouldn't call it white bread.

i did somewhat burn the crust since those two breads were the last batch and the stone was scorching it ended up baking the bottoms too quickly, i had to flip them over on the stone to get it somewhat even, still burned a little.

How much time did it took you to prepare and make all of it, op?

looks great

Honestly i'm pretty new to this, i've only recently found the recipe that works best for me after trying out many recipes i've found online over the past two months.

no recipe will fit you perfectly since your conditions are always slightly different then the recipe maker, starter is a little different, flour a little weaker/stronger etc..

anyway my current method takes about 12-13 hours start to finish, sound like a lot but you just sit around waiting for the dough to rise, not a lot of actual work..

I'm assuming this does not include the time that goes into your sourdough starter

i can write up a proper guide if anyones interested..

it does, i always have an active starter ready for use, the 12-13 hours includes the making of a poolish from that starter.

I'm very interested. Never baked one before, but I have some time tomorrow.

alright, i'll make a proper guide+recipe in a few hours, but if you dont have an active sourdough starter already you're not gonna be making any sourdough tomorrow since it takes a while to make a starter from scratch..

Few things make me as jealous as good bread threads
Looks awesome OP

my meager contribution. some rye bread I baked.

came out breddy dense, but not too bad for a first try

>rye
>surprised it's dense
Try a 40% rye 60% unbleached wheat bread if you want an open crumb nigguh

There's dense and then there's 'too dense'. It's roughly 50/50 as is, but I think I messed up my timing in the ferment.

looks tasty dude, spread it with good quality butter & dip that shit into soup. must be heavenly

Ok guys if anyone is interested in making the breads in the OP heres my recipe/guide:

First, these are sourdough breads so you'll be needing a sourdough starter to make them, if you dont already have a starter ready, you could make your own but it takes about 2 weeks to get a stable starter that you can work with.

=========SKIP THIS IF YOU HAVE AN ACTIVE STARTER ALREADY==========
To make a starter simply mix equal amounts of flour and water in a small jar, cover loosely until it starts bubbling (2-3 days), then throw away 75% and mix in equal parts of flour and water again to replace the 75% you threw out, do this every 24h if the jar is sitting in a cool place (not the fridge) or every 12h if its sitting in a warm place, after about 12 days the starter should be doubling consistently after every feeding, at this point you can make bread with it, when you're done using it you can feed it and throw it in the fridge, it will need feeding once a week refrigerated.
=================================================================

See this video series for a step by step starter making and followup day by day:
youtube.com/watch?v=BIFPzoFeioQ&list=PLDqMWhgSTguGZFILq0CwgMyIZ-GgAkT3z

On to the recipe, what you'll need is:
>20g Sourdough Starter
>60g Whole Wheat flour
>445g Bread flour
>385g Water
>11g Fine Sea salt

The preparation:
First we'll make a poolish (a pre ferment), mix together 20g whole wheat flour, 20g bread flour, 20 sourdough starter and 40g water, cover loosely and leave to ferment until its a little more then doubled in size (should take about about 4.5-5 hours depending on strength of starter and room temp)

continued..

An hour after we mix the poolish we'll mix together the rest of the flour and water (no salt) in a separate bowl, the water should be cold, i refrigerate a bottle a few hours before, i also dont use tap water because the chlorine in it can slow down the fermentation, you dont have to use mineral/filtered like i do, i'm just OCD about it, it works just fine with tap, might take slightly longer,
so mix together 40g whole wheat in 345g of cold water, then add 425g bread flour and mix well, dont knead this or anything, just mix until all the flour and water is incorporated evenly, cover and set aside until the poolish is ready, the dough will slowly come to room temperature.

When the poolish has risen to a little over double in size its ready to go, weigh 75g of the poolish and add it to the dough, mix this by hand into the dough by folding it in on itself until it looks somewhat even, this should take long, if its not evenly mixed after about a minute of folding thats fine, wait 20-30minutes and then mix in the salt and fold again for about a minute, let it rest for about 20-30minutes.

Now comes the kneading, i plop the dough on the bench and Slap and Fold until the dough feels tacky and gets a nice Windowpane, this video shows what Slap and fold kneading is and what a windowpane test is:
youtu.be/9dUZ0O-Wv0Q

Depending on your bread flour protein content the dough might need more/less kneading before its read, in the OP i made bread with two different bread flours, one is a regular bread flour with a 12g protein content, it took a few minutes of kneading, while the italian bread flour i used in the other loaf had a protein content of 13.7g and hardly required any kneading at all, honestly it could have probably turned out fine without any kneading, the gluten was that developed after the 4 hours it sat in the bowl.

Continued...

Once you're done place the dough in a lightly oiled glass bowl to rise, take note how high the dough is in the bowl, when its doubled in size its ready, this can take up to 6 hours in some cases so i basically set it and forget it for the first 4 hours.

When its doubled in size i remove it carefully from the bowl onto the bench trying not to deflate it as much as possible, dont use any flour at this point, with the sticky dough on the bench use a dough scraper to make a tight boule, if you're dough scraper is wide enough you can use this method:
youtu.be/vEG1BjWroT0?t=3m4s @3:04
if its a little narrower like mine you can use this method:
youtu.be/5meu6e2zI1I?t=56s @0:56

Dont expect the boule to be as round and tight as the one in the videos though, those doughs are about 70% hydration and ours is 76%, quite wetter, so expect the boule to spread out quite a bit, its fine as long as the surface is smooth like in the videos, let it rest uncovered for 20min.

After 20m you'll notice the skin of the dough is not sticky anymore, very lightly flour it and with the dough scraper flip it over, you'll now shape it like this:
youtu.be/l0Ob6v8GpM0?t=2m40s @2:40

Place it in a flowered basket (rice flower prevent sticking) and let it rest for 20min, then refrigerate overnight covered in a towel.

Continued...

In the morning when you're ready to bake you'll need to bake with steam for the first 25min to get that nice oven spring, if you have a dutch oven/cast iron pot/clay pot you're good to go, alternatively if you have a pizza stone to bake on thats also good.

Preheat your oven to 260c i prefer not to use the Fan option, the heating element makes for a better oven spring at least with my oven, make sure the oven is heating up With the dutch oven/cast iron pot/clay pot/pizza stone in it, once it hits the desired temp take your loaf out of the refrigerator, now this is where we do things differently depending on what you bake in,

Dutch oven/cast iron pot/clay pot:
Take out the hot pot from the oven and sit it on an insulator, tip the loaf out of the basket gently but carefully into the pot, using a very sharp knife or razor blade make three diagonal slices on top, doesn't have to be deep, close the lid and place back in the oven, lower the temp to 250c

Pizza Stone:
Take some parchment paper and lay it on the bench, tip the loaf out of the basket gently onto the parchment paper, using a very sharp knife or razor blade make three diagonal slices on top, doesn't have to be deep, carefully lift the parchment with the loaf and place into the oven on the stone, if you have an oven safe bowl that is big enough to cover the loaf use it as a cover in the oven, if not you'll need to spray some water in the oven before closing it and spray again after 10 minutes, also if you have no cover you must use the oven heating element, the fan will dry the loaf up too quickly.

After 25 minutes have passed remove the lid from the pot/take cover off and continue the bake until the loaf has a nice brown color, cool it on a cooling rack, gotta keep some air flow on the bottom or it'll turn soggy.

Good luck!

Great recipe/tutorial, thanks OP!

looks like a lot of work. All I do is dump the whole wheat flour portion of my bread into the starter tub, then add hot water to make it an 100% hydration goop, and let that ferment overnight.

In the morning, I dump the mix into a bread machine (a mixer with a dough hook would probably work better) then add a bit of oil, salt, and enough bread flour to make the dough the correct hydration.

when that's done kneading, I form the loaves, put them in the greased and cornmeal powdered bread pans. then cover them in a coat of oil and saran wrap and put them on top of the fridge.

Then once they've risen, I bake them for around 50 minutes @350 degrees in a preheated oven, and covered snugly with tin toil. when they're done I wrap them in tea towels and let them cool a couple hours before slicing.

oh yeah, I don't dump all the starter mix into the mixer. I leave a little left and put that back in the fridge. that is the starter.

Thanks!

May look like a lot of work but its really not, its just a lot to read since i detail every little thing, this is truly a beginners guide, and theres a whole section on hand kneading for people without mixers so the instructions make it seem like the process is longer then it really is.

kneading bit very helpful, I've been hacking together some kneading, but I think it's been not great. Will try this next time.