[HN Gopher] The Sourdough Framework ___________________________________________________________________ The Sourdough Framework Author : hendricius Score : 386 points Date : 2023-05-16 13:27 UTC (9 hours ago) (HTM) web link (github.com) (TXT) w3m dump (github.com) | ww520 wrote: | It's great that more and more software practices are bleeding | into other walks of life. | OJFord wrote: | Glad to see this get some traction here, I submitted it myself a | few months ago as it happens. I've been baking my ~weekly bread | according to 'the bread code' for years, thank you! | | Interested to notice the standalone 'pizza-code' this time when I | had another skim - I've been using the (third party contributed | believe) pizza dough recipe in the bread code recently. | | (I still use it rather than this repo just because, in the case | of bread, it's in my head; for pizza, it's easier to reference in | the old repo structure/format on mobile, not being formatted for | book. | tomp wrote: | Ah, the _Bread Code_ guy! Engineer + chef, definitely my type of | person. | | I was recently following some of his YT videos, the invaluable | tip that I got from him (and I haven't seen elsewhere) is to take | a _sample_ of the dough and observe its rise, to know when the | main dough is ready for baking. | | I just made a beautiful baguette yesterday using this tip! | HanClinto wrote: | We absolutely love this book. Thank you for your work on this! My | wife has been a user of open-source projects for a long time, but | this book was the first time that she made me sit down and teach | her about pull requests, because she wanted to contribute back to | this one. | | We love the idea of managing and distributing a book through | source control like this. Brilliant execution, and fantastic | content! | hendricius wrote: | Thank you very much! Also thanks a lot for opening up so many | pull requests with amazing fixes! | lysecret wrote: | Damn, thats interesting. Are there more examples of open source | books? Quite an interesting idea, especially for non fiction. | junon wrote: | I thought this was going to be yet another javascript frontend | framework with yet another less than descriptive name, but lo and | behold this is _actually_ about sourdough. Neat! | | EDIT: Appears the author has one for Pizza Dough[0]. Gotta try | that one out as it's more applicable to me than sourdough. | | [0] https://github.com/hendricius/pizza-dough | HeckFeck wrote: | sourdough.js was initially appreciated for being an airy-light | framework, but as it rose to a great height many security holes | were spotted under the crust; it wasn't quite ready for the | daily crunch of production. | | The dev team tried to butter over these concerns, but it wasn't | enough. It was forgotten and the codebase is mostly stale now. | majikandy wrote: | Clever. Time to use Rusk. Oh no that's Rust isn't it. | junon wrote: | Devs too to long to cook up new features which left a sour | taste in my mouth tbh. | ericghildyal wrote: | Don't worry, it looks to be on the rise, there will be more | features baked in before you know it! | chrislan815 wrote: | lmao my thought exactly | projektfu wrote: | I was wondering the same thing, and if there was some way that | you needed to hand bits of the framework to other people to | enable them to use it. | xipho wrote: | The present work is a merger of that effort he claims. | hendricius wrote: | The current repo combines most of my experience from the past | years into one single framework that you can use as basis for | other recipes. | Yeroc wrote: | Is there any plan to introduce some simplifications to the | processes using things like a bread machine to handle | automating the rise and kneading of the bread doughs? | soperj wrote: | As someone who bakes bread and other doughy items weekly | and has for over a decade, bread machines are more work | than making by hand and make bread that sucks. If you use | less yeast, and let it slow rise there's no kneeding | involved and it tastes way better. | danielovichdk wrote: | Sure. But with sourdough the dough needs to build gluten | when mixed, hence the window-test. More gluten gives a | stronger and airy loaf. You can do that by hands but it | takes too much effort compared to a machine. Imo | soperj wrote: | I leave it on the counter overnight. I don't kneed it at | all and end up with a nice airy loaf. | jan_k_ wrote: | You can make excellent sourdough without any kneading | using the fermentolysis technique. No machine needed and | absolutely not "too much effort". | hendricius wrote: | Agreed! Bread machines don't make sense. You can make a | very simple dough in 1 minute of work. I recommend 500g | whole rye or wheat, 400g water, 100g sourdough starter, | 20g salt. Mix all with a spatula for 1 minute until no | chunks of flour are left. Put into greased loaf pan. Wait | until roughly doubled in size. Bake in the oven at | 200degC until core temperature is 92degC. | soperj wrote: | I do 1.5 cups of water, 3 cups of flour, sourdough | starter and some amount of salt that it around 1 or 2 | teaspoons. Mix with a spatula for a minute as well, and | then put a lid on it and leave it on the counter | overnight. Bake at 500degF for 45 minutes in a dutch oven | or a ceramic cookware that's loaf shaped. | hendricius wrote: | Just posting this here too, my pizza calculator could be | interesting too: https://pizza-calculator.the-bread-code.io/. | It's part of the repo as well. | b33j0r wrote: | I was hoping it would be isomorphic. I could just like make the | recipe, and weigh out the ingredients... and then some geek | browser would do the work. | | Disappointed, but I'll have to learn to adapt! My hydration | levels were way too low the last time I tried. (Any joke you | find in there is probably true about my experiences haha). | 2rsf wrote: | I have a pet at home, having another spoiled one like sour dough | is too much for me | hendricius wrote: | Your sourdough is resilient can can survive for years without | being fed. When dried the spores last for thousands of years | :-) | [deleted] | iraldir wrote: | The concept is appealing but the name seems reductory. Sourdough, | despite its fame, is but one type of bread. Seing that you had | another book called the bread code I went to check that out but | it's marked deprecated by this one. | | So is this a case of an ill-fitting name that does not do justice | to the content, or is the content just limited to sourdough as | the end-all of bread making? | | I'm personally not found of the sourness of sourdough bread | compared to a Ciabatta or a French baguette | crispyambulance wrote: | Sourdough is many types of bread. The only thing in common is | that the leavening agent is natural rather than commercial | yeast. You _can_ have sourdough that isn 't "sour", in fact, | it's typically not sour. Ciabatta and baguettes are frequently | made with natural levain (sourdough). | | I think that the sour taste reputation comes from particular | styles like "San Francisco sourdough" and the fact that many | folks over-do it with the starter or allow the dough to rise | for too long. | | Try bread from some artisanal bakers, you'll very quickly | experience the range of naturally leavened bread. | tomp wrote: | Do you know of a bullet-proof sourdough Ciabatta recipe? All | that I've made either didn't rise, or were too _weak_ so they | spread out a lot before rising... | crispyambulance wrote: | Ciabatta is hard. I have tried the recipe (and others) from | "the perfect loaf"-- but never exactly because I don't have | easy access to the flour brands he uses. | | This one: https://www.theperfectloaf.com/ciabatta-bread- | recipe/ | | The key thing, IMHO, is high-protein (high gluten) bread | flour. It helps to keep structure with any high-hydration | dough. Also, if I remember correctly, ciabatta should not | proof too long, or it gets too slack. I used a canvas | couche and made the loaves relatively small. | soperj wrote: | Yep, it's actually more difficult to get the sour flavor than | it is to not get it. | tomp wrote: | Really? I'd love to get less sour flavour, but proofing | overnight (in the fridge) looks like it's really hard to | avoid it... | soperj wrote: | I leave it on the counter overnight. I really have to | work at getting any sour flavour at all. My starter | smells a little like cotton candy to me though when it's | ready to go, floats really well in the water. | joe5150 wrote: | "Sourdough" is a spectrum of breads resulting from various | natural and/or long fermentation techniques. Ciabatta is | usually made from a partially natural fermentation (biga or | poolish) and baguette made this way is also popular. | OJFord wrote: | It's only a type of bread if you're a marketing guy for a pre- | sliced going on a shelf in a supermarket. | | Otherwise it's a (bad name IMO for a) leavening method. | Basically just not using controlled/commercial/instant yeast, | but from the environment. | | Guarantee original baguettes were made with an environmental | yeast starter/levain, probably some bakers continue to. | birdyrooster wrote: | They are all good depending on your mood and food pairing. | styeco wrote: | Check out his Youtube channel: | https://www.youtube.com/c/thebreadcode I've been watching his | videos for years now, he genuinely cares about his subject, and | doesn't compromise for views. He's an engineer at heart, admits | when he's wrong and updates and shares his knowledge. Thanks | Hendrik! | hendricius wrote: | Thank you too! | AlanYx wrote: | This is truly phenomenal work! Have you experimented with any | traditional additives, such as adding a small amount of citric | acid to increase diacetyl production during fermentation? | hendricius wrote: | Not too much yet! I am mostly focused on trying to find the | best flour/water/salt combination currently. | danielovichdk wrote: | Making a good airy loaf with a good caramelised crust is a craft | that most people will come to find extremely difficult. | | It's so much about bacteria, flour type, humidity, heat/cool, | rest, gluten, proteins and practice. | | A good idea is to use the same flour when you practice. Over and | over again. | | Use less water in the beginning and use a machine for kneading. | Don't be pedantic about exact grams but be as precise as you | feel. | | It's a really really interesting process and it becomes | interesting because its a living thing. It's bacteria that does | the magic. Love it | phreeza wrote: | I use a machine for the initial kneading but then do manual | stretch and fold a couple of times. | Neff wrote: | This reminds me of the Fermented Hot Sauce repo - | https://github.com/aweijnitz/recipe-el_fuego_viviente | | I love to see people share these sorts of experiments and | document their evolution | Sugimot0 wrote: | If anybody seeing this wants to dive deeper into the rabbit hole, | I'd recommend this: | | https://www.thefreshloaf.com/ | frsandstone wrote: | Have you considered making a standalone tool to take input | variables and generate custom instructions? | | Your introduction suggests that you know people's input variables | (type of flour, environment, other ingredients, etc) have a heavy | influence on the end product. It might be easier to generate | custom instructions rather than generate content for every | possible combination. | hendricius wrote: | It would be great if this were possible. I believed it could be | done initially, but then I realized it depends on too many | parameters: Flour, water, temperature, sourdough starter | microbes, starter microbial activity level, desired | consistency, baking times and a few others. One guy once tried | to put together a table with different starter levels: https:// | www.wraithnj.com/breadpics/rise_time_table/bread_mod.... In | practice it doesn't work though. | andreasscherman wrote: | Here's a declarative sourdough "recipe" generator: | https://breadfriend.com | petee wrote: | I think this may have been posted on HN, but i forget -- | https://makefastworkshop.com/hacks/?p=20200515 | timdiggerm wrote: | From the intro: | | > It is crazy if you think about it. People have been using this | process despite not knowing what was actually going on for | thousands of years! | | Just wait until you hear about literally everything ever | lemming wrote: | _Just wait until you hear about literally everything ever_ | | Or a lot of modern medicine right now. Lots of useful drugs are | discovered totally by accident: "Oh look, my patient took this | for foot sores and it turns out it helps his hair loss", and | then the drug gets used forever more, despite having really no | idea at all why it should work. We don't even really know how | paracetamol works. | mayormcmatt wrote: | Just yesterday I started watching the video series promoting | Bill Hammack's book "The Things We Make" in which he discusses | how many incredible ancient structures were built using rules | of thumb rather than an actual understanding of the science | /math underpinning their strength. Truly fascinating. | | https://youtu.be/_ivqWN4L3zU | jeffreyrogers wrote: | Modern engineering still works that way for lots of thing. | danjoredd wrote: | Its pretty crazy. I wonder how many things like that we do | now...using a process without _really_ understanding what is | happening. Computers, cars, and technology are easy guesses but | I am willing to bet there is a lot of "non-tech" stuff that we | do like that. Doing something with a proven process, but never | really understanding why that process works. | th3byrdm4n wrote: | Literally everything AI right now | mpsprd wrote: | This book got me into making my own bread, thank you hendricius! | | Toughts I didn't take the time to put in an mr: | | -The text is dense like a fruitcake. A bit of air would go a long | way to make it more digestible. Sometimes long explanations on | progressions are mixed in with key information, and it makes it | hard to follow. | | -I forget if I compiled it or used the pdf but by memory it was | the default latex font, which makes the text look like a paper. | | -Starter care and setup was the hardest for me to parse. Having | bullets for key concepts would really help. The diagram helps but | still has some ambiguity. | | Even my grandma, impressed by my beautiful bread, adopted your | technique :) | anotherevan wrote: | Anyone have experience baking bread using oat flour? I have a kid | with serious IBS issues, so no wheat, no eggs and limited spelt. | There's one brand we can buy at the local health food store that | fits the bill - which they can eat as much of as they want. | | All the recipes I've found so far either require egg, or mixing | in a bit of spelt. | chefandy wrote: | I should make some of these for savory cooking. I'm a classically | trained chef, (though glad I no longer work in food service,) | designer, artist, long-time developer, and have a useful balance | between the technical and aesthetic perspectives on cooking. | | While I'd normally call a document like this a deep-dive into a | "technique" or, maybe a collection of techniques, calling it a | framework might be a useful mental model for the dev crowd. | Recipes lie-- without knowing the underlying reasons that certain | techniques work the way they do, you'll never really know what | you're going for and why. This stuff is not difficult to explain, | but recipes aren't the appropriate places to explain it. Most | people are really surprised to see how few recipes there are in | many professional cooking text books. They're similar to books | about programming languages while cookbooks are essentially | collections of standalone tutorials that don't explain much | theory. | | Is there any particular deep dive you'd enjoy reading about? Meat | cookery really trips people up. As does seasoning. Sauces too. | rtehfm wrote: | From a security perspective, as someone who enjoys cooking as a | hobby, I thought it would be interesting to use a tactic-by- | technique perspective. You could visualize the tactics and | techniques as a matrix of cooking techniques grouped by tactics | moving from researching menus, procuring ingredients, preparing | ingredients, to cutting/trimming techniques, to | cooking/grilling/sauteing, to plating/presenting. | chefandy wrote: | My _gut_ says these processes are too context-dependent to | easily express that way, and even making multiple matrices | would require abstraction to the point of not being useful. | But I 'd have to chew on it for a while. | 9dev wrote: | I've been cooking for most of my life, with my mother letting | me help in the kitchen starting with 4.I never learned much | theory and just went by what felt right or tasted good. I would | say over time, you get a feeling for the basic building blocks | - which ingredients match, how to a certain texture, when to | reduce things or add some liquid,and so on - which makes | recipes more like guidelines, or inspiration, introducing a new | idea or combination. | | Incidentally, that also matches the way I've learned | programming, and likewise, I notice the same downsides - | sometimes, I know there's a better, or more reliable, way to | achieve something, but I lack the theoretic background to go | there. | | Having said all that: I would really appreciate learning the | way different taste combinations work out. High quality | restaurants always seem to combine simple ingredients into an | elegant ,,pattern" of aroma (you see I notice good terms), | something I never quite manage. I bet there's some simply | chemistry involved, some generic rules broadly applicable. I'd | love to read that! | chefandy wrote: | > I've been cooking for most of my life, with my mother | letting me help in the kitchen starting with 4.I never | learned much theory and just went by what felt right or | tasted good. I would say over time, you get a feeling for the | basic building blocks - which ingredients match, how to a | certain texture, when to reduce things or add some liquid,and | so on - which makes recipes more like guidelines, or | inspiration, introducing a new idea or combination. | | That's how most professional cooks I've known have learned to | cook, initially. Those sorts of experiences certainly help | form your personal taste. | | > sometimes, I know there's a better, or more reliable, way | to achieve something, but I lack the theoretic background to | go there. | | I think a lot of people are in this boat, but probably | underestimate the utility of that theoretical knowledge. I | think it's akin to being a musician-- while many people who | play instruments in their spare time can likely play a few | songs that are quite appealing to most people, there's | probably a vast gulf in the raw, general-purpose capability | of an experienced, dedicated professional or a degree-trained | music student. | | > High quality restaurants always seem to combine simple | ingredients into an elegant ,,pattern" of aroma (you see I | notice good terms), something I never quite manage. I bet | there's some simply chemistry involved, some generic rules | broadly applicable. I'd love to read that! | | Sadly, that pattern doesn't exist. While the fusion chefs | from a few decades ago tried their best to codify this (and | came up with some pretty tasty food in the process, even if | it is a bit passe,) it's just not that simple. | | So how do they do it? Imagine your five favorite dishes... | now imagine how much you might learn about them if you cooked | them repeatedly for 1.5x to 2x the number of hours in a | standard office job for a week? A month? A year? A decade? | Now imagine that in this process, you'll have worked with | dozens of other people who've dedicated their lives to | creating and reasoning about food and flavors that are all | also cooking your 5 favorite dishes with you? And on top of | that, you're serving them to a fickle dining crowd who will | throw it right back at you if it doesn't delight them? To | boot, restaurant food is WAY more labor intensive than home | cooking because economies of scale allow it. You have | professional prep cooks that will simmer that beef stock for | 16 hours to get it exactly like you want it. Things like that | add so much to the final product, but you just can't put your | finger on _how_. | | When it comes to things that tongues sense-- saltiness, | sweetness, tanginess, glutamates, bitterness-- there are | pretty straightforward ways of reasoning about them even if | the rules are a bit nebulous. Saltiness tends to tamp down | bitterness which is why it's lovely with chocolate and dark | caramel, for example. Sweetness tends to round out tanginess | really well which is why many things from citrus glazes to | high quality candies to many cocktails are so much more | delicious than something that is either merely sweet or sour. | When people say your sense of taste is dulled because of a | cold, they're mistaken. Your tongue senses everything just as | well as it did before-- but you can't _smell_ anything. If | you take a cherry hard candy and a lemon hard candy and put | them in your mouth with your nose totally blocked, you won 't | likely be able to distinguish between them. As soon as the | aroma hits your olfactory bulb, they're as different as | different can be. When you sense something intensely with | your olfactory bulb AND your tongue is activated, that is | when your brain says "there's something in my mouth right | now." That's why it's so difficult to eat in the midst of | unpleasant smells, and why under-salted food tastes so | boring. Playing with things sensed by your olfactory bulb-- | pretty much anything you consider part of flavor that isn't | one of the broad-stroke things sensed by your tongue-- is | dramatically more complex. | | These do it so well because a) they've spent years, if not | decades, deliberately training their palate, personal taste, | and understanding of these interactions, b) spend 60 or 80 | hours per week cooking and understanding how these things | work together, c) have their dishes are tasted, workshopped | and tweaked by all of the other experienced professional | cooks around, d) etc. etc. etc. It is truly the 'art' in | culinary arts and the only way to get good at it is to do it | a whole lot for a long time. | | A really good example from my recent past is a parmesean | peppercorn dressing I've made hundreds of times. One time, I | was in a hurry and toasted the black peppercorns far more | than most generally would, so the citrus notes totally | subsided and it took on this deep toasty property. I was | worried the dressing would taste burnt, but it was _Fucking | Magic._ The people I was cooking for-- all competent and | experienced cooks-- looked at me like I 'd just spun gold. | Black pepper in most circumstances doesn't benefit from being | that heavily toasted, but it's just one of those things that | you kind of have to be taught, specifically, or discover by | yourself. | | A good resource for reasoning about these things is The | Flavor Bible. | deathanatos wrote: | I know the HN hivemind just updoots whatever tickles the hive- | fancy for the day, but in my current day, it's hard to see this | trending on HN and think anything other than software engineering | as an industry has simply given up, and is just becoming things | like breadmakers now. Farming, pottery, basketweaving are | probably also decent career segues. | | I literally got so fed up with trying to debug another team's | service that I stood up to quell my frustration by eating, like | most people do. In my attempt to procure a sandwich, the POS | terminal -- which has only a hole for chip and pin cards -- asked | me to swipe the magstripe on my card. | | Since I can't even buy a sandwich, I suppose this guide will come | in handy for the bread. | lifeisstillgood wrote: | I think "tickles the hive-fancy" needs to be a concept - Inwant | the economist to write articles about it. :-) | aleksiy123 wrote: | Docker to build a book is definitely something new. Not that it | doesn't make some sense just something I've never seen. | woolion wrote: | I was wondering about that. It's using texlive-full, which | requires several gigabytes to install and is, for me at least, | always the longest step when setting up a new (Linux) computer. | It can also make sure to have reproducible builds, which I | don't think there is a Latex-native solution for. Or is there a | better approach? | dlisboa wrote: | I don't think there is. I've compiled books in LaTeX and in | Pandoc, nothing but regret filled my veins afterwards. | Installing those dependencies is just a terrible experience. | | Leave it in Docker to save people the hassle. | ar_lan wrote: | I love this concept, and applying open source to it. I have long | seen the correlation between code and food, because recipes are | just instructions for humans on how to interact with food to | construct something. | | Recipes are code, just a different form. | darknavi wrote: | I love the idea of "compiling" a book. | | Do people do this with music? I really like the idea of | programmatically making music and compiling it. | aleksiy123 wrote: | Funnily enough thats the original usage or common definition of | "compile". | | https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/compilin... | | Here it's really a two pass compiling. One by human and one by | the machine. | ramses0 wrote: | Have I got a thrill for you! | | https://www.mutopiaproject.org | | https://lilypond.org | | https://www.hacklily.org | | ...it really helped me understand why "$SCORE = ( $MELODY + | $BASS )" was sometimes superior to viewing sheet music as a | "wall of notes and chords". You have to "play the wall" as it | comes at you, but mentally, thinking of it as "melody goes la | la la, bass goes boom bang boom" helps to provide context to | what are the roles of the two notes you're playing. | gomezjdaniel wrote: | Hey hendricius! Just wanted to say thank you for your free | material. I discovered you months ago and I love your | 'scientific' approach | | Looking forward to that Kickstarter campaign :) | hendricius wrote: | Thank you very much! | api_or_ipa wrote: | Oh man ~180mb to build a _book_. It's 2023, why hasn't someone | figured out a good way to check in photos and other binary | objects into a git repo? I'd expect someone in the latex or ML | community to have build a pre-commit hook to, I don't know, link | & upload to S3 or something, right? | | I think git (and vcs in general) could be revolutionary to the | way experts in all fields including law, medicine, book editing & | publishing, etc can collaborate and track changes on shared | documents, but yeah, we really haven't figured out how to handle | necessary accoutrements like images without blowing up the repo | size. | | Otherwise, definitely enjoyed seeing a project layout using | directories for chapters. Might crib (with attribution!) the | project layout next time I feel like writing something. | marssaxman wrote: | perhaps this is the tool you want? | | https://github.com/plaidml/git-big | martopix wrote: | I'm not sure what you're suggesting. If you want to version | control your images you can, and then they will use up size, if | you don't want to, don't version control them. In github, you | can also just download the master branch as a zip, instead of | cloning, if you don't want the whole history. | malikNF wrote: | Started making sourdough a few months back thanks to the bread | code youtube channel [1](someone here actually recommended them) | | He taught everything from creating your starter from just water | and flour. And then goes in to so many little details that made | my first sourdough bread actually something I was proud if. He's | a great teacher. | | It's really fun and you don't need that much to get started. | | [1]https://m.youtube.com/@the_bread_code | racl101 wrote: | This is amazing! Thank you! | jillesvangurp wrote: | As an occasional amateur baker with a five year old starter in | the fridge and lots of hard learned lessons (aka. tasty | failures), this looks like a well researched but probably | slightly intimidating book on the subject. | | I started out like many by watching some Youtube movies. Except I | did it a few years before Covid. So, slightly before it got | really hip to do it. | | Some things that I've learned over the years (with the help of | lots of Youtube wisdom): | | - There are a lot of Youtube bakers parroting each other and not | all of what they insist is the one and only way to do it is | necessarily very valuable or good advice. The key thing to | realize is that you are implementing a process, not following a | recipe that is set in stone. It's not that they are wrong but | they tend to present a detailed recipe without a lot of context. | If you don't understand the process, that's not going to end | well. Unless you get lucky. Look for the ones that explain why | they are doing certain things. The ones that explain the process. | | - The fridge is your best friend. You can park your starter there | for long periods of time. It will be fine and you can revive it | in a couple of days when you need to. This also largely removes | the need to discard left over starter. A well established starter | can take a lot of abuse. Move it to the freezer if you really | plan to not bake for a few months/years. Countless youtubers tell | you to keep it outside the fridge and feed it daily. You don't | need to do this unless you want to. The fridge works like a pause | button on metabolism. My starter has survived a lot of abuse over | the past five years. And it still works fine. | | - Flour matters. But most flours can work. Whole wheat and rye | are tasty but also more tricky to deal with. For beginners, use | some proper bread flour with a high protein content. Hold off on | the more complex mixes until you can nail that the simpler white | bread. | | - Measure by weight not by volume. If you know what you are doing | you can totally eyeball it and go by feel. I baked sourdoughs for | over a year before even buying scales. Lots of failures but also | lots of tasty bread. But being exact is what makes your process | repeatable and allows you to fine tune, optimize it and get luck | out of the equation. E.g. dialing back the hydration requires | that you kow what it was to begin with. Be aware that you still | need to adjust for temperature, flour, humidity, etc. There are a | lot of variables that you can't control. Measuring by volume your | margin of error is too high to say anything definitive about | hydration levels. It might be 80% it might be 65%. The difference | is important if you want to fix your mistakes. | | - Larger quantities make it easier to measure more accurately. | Bake 2 breads instead of 1. Again this matters to make the | process repeatable. | | - All the numbers are arbitrary, up to you, need adjusting for | environment and flour, and largely a matter of taste. | Understanding what happens when you change the numbers is the key | to producing good results consistently. | | - Use the clock for planning. But always verify your dough is | actually in the state where you assume it to be. This is subject | to so many variables (temperature, dough, humidity, how fresh | your starter was, etc.) that it can be hard to predict. So, use | the clock to plan when to check. Check more often if it is | warmer. Things go quicker. Keeping track of weights and timings | makes it easier to figure out the correct timings. | | - Use a Dutch Oven. It helps. The lid traps the steam and that | allows the bread to expand before a crust forms. Bake with the | lid on at the max temperature of your oven. Basically until it is | done expanding. 15-20 minutes typically. Remove the lid, and | lower the temperature until the bread is done (I like my bread | dark & crusty). Size of your loaf matters obviously. Adjust | timings to your taste. another 20-25 minutes would be normal. You | can play with the temperatures and timings of course. And what | actually works will depend on your oven of course. | wiredfool wrote: | My starter dates to March of 2020. It's a pandemic baby. | | * Timing is flexible. Especially if you toss in a tiny bit of | yeast. | | * The dutch oven is great, but it complicates baking. You get | to do one loaf at a time. OTOH, It's a relly good loaf. Sadly | though, the electricity costs are high. | | * Wet doughs can use basic flour, which is good because hi- | gluten bread flour has been scarce in Ireland for the past | couple of years. | | What I do: | | 540g bog standard white flour. (lidl, definitely _not_ self | raising or with raising agents like most of the flour in | Ireland). Replace up to 200g with coarse wheaten flour. | | 280g water | | 1 tbsp salt | | 1/8tbsp yeast if it's cold. | | 300g 1:1 flour/water starter. | | In the morning, Mix the dry ingredients with a spatula, mix in | the wet ones to a mixed dough. Let it sit for 1/2 hour. Lightly | knead in your hands for 30 sec or so. Oil the bowl, put the | dough back in and wiggle it around, then cover with plastic | wrap. Do other stuff till dinner time. | | Quickly (1-2 turns) form the loaf, plop it on a baking paper | back in the bowl. | | In an hour or two, depending on how warm it is and if it's | final rising fast or not, start the oven with the dutch oven in | it. Preheat at least 30 min. Bake 30 lid on +30 min lid off at | ~180c fan. | | Things not to do: | | * Forget to start the oven, get ready to go to bed and realize | that the loaf is still sitting on the counter. | | * Worry too much. It's all grand. | | * Forget to take it out, though an extra 30 min is surprisingly | ok. Just thicker crust. | | The starter gets equal weights of water and flour, supposedly | every night, but more likely the night before baking and the | morning of baking. I bake every 2 days. | lapetitejort wrote: | > - The fridge is your best friend. | | Building on this, make more than one loaf and keep it in the | fridge until ready. For some reason I would make two loaves and | bake them the same day. Then it was a rush to eat them before | they lost their tastiness. Now I make two loaves and take my | sweet time eating them. Making two loaves is only marginally | more labor than one loaf. | ranting-moth wrote: | Personally I'd either freeze or leave out the second loaf. | Putting it in the fridge seems to quicken then staling | process, however weird that sounds. | lapetitejort wrote: | Sorry, I mean leave the dough in the fridge and bake it | when ready. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-05-16 23:00 UTC)