a better baking day

[kindkit]

By 10 am I had pastry made and chilling in the fridge for the potato, cheese, onion and greens pie I'm making, and my bread almost ready to go in the oven. I feel all diligent and accomplished.

I got a really good rise in the bread, and nice oven spring, good color, etc. Here it is just out of the oven:






For once I think I got it to the right internal temperature so it won't be underbaked in the middle--it's a huge loaf, so that can be tricky--and it did that crust-crackling thing when taken out of the oven, which is also a good sign.

/bread bragging

Well, maybe not, because if it turns out right I may post another picture once it's cut.

Yes, I am enjoying all the things I can do with my new phone.

Comments

[rike_tikki_tavi]

I've just a few weeks ago started my own sourdough again after years of not baking bread. That's also the reason I'm still having issues with structure. The yeasts and lactic acid bacteria are not quite balanced yet. Plus, I love rye bread and that has less gluten so getting it to rise properly is a bit more iffy.

A home made starter can survive in the fridge for over a month without being used, so even if you don't bake that often, it's worth a try. At worst you can just feed if a few tablespoons of flour and water every few weeks. And sourdough surplus can be used up by being added to pancake batter.

I have a good forum for bread recipes and tips for making your own sourdough but it is in German, so I don't know if that would be any help to you.

[kindkit]

Yum, rye bread. That's another of my bread ambitions, to one day make one of those old-fashioned, dense, central European rye loaves. That is to say, to make one well, and not all weird and gooey the way it turned out the one time I tried.

The forum sounds great but unfortunately my German is still at the level of "Die Frau trinkt Bier," so probably no use to me yet! There's an English-language forum called The Fresh Loaf that I know has a lot of sourdough information, though. Maybe I'll give sourdough another try in the autumn--it will soon be too warm here for me to want to bake. In the summer, if I bake bread at all it's just buns, because they're small and don't need the oven on for an hour and a half.