Any wash you do should be put on immediately before placing in the oven. Glad it’s turning out well. I love making my own bread.
If I want to make rolls instead of baguette, is it as easy as just forming different shapes (using this same recipe), and adjusting the cooking time?
I realize I can just try it and see, but I suspect you actually know!
Yep, just watch them carefully and maybe take them out a little earlier. You can make baguettes, boules, ficelles, rolls, whatever.
So I made this bread AGAIN !
This time with all bread flour. Made the dough as wet as I dared. Autolysed. Windowpaned. Let rise till doubled.
(After which I gently folded it into itself, exactly 8 times, which I saw in a video on a French blog!)
I divided it in half, putting one half into the fridge in an oiled bowl covered with Saran for a cold fermenting.
The loaf I baked that very evening came out beautifully. The folding made varied sized holes inside the bread. It was the lightest bread yet, and very crusty. And it looked the part too! Husband was over the moon.
So now it’s been a day, and tomorrow I want to bake the loaf that’s cold fermenting, but I have a couple of questions. I have to confess I’m confused how or if, this time in the fridge counts as the first rise? Because I can’t really tell how much it has risen, to be honest!
If the time in the fridge counts as the first rise, then I just let the dough warm up to room temp, fold it into a loaf, set it aside for last rise, then bake. Am I right?
Or, does time in the fridge not count as the first rise? And I need to do two rises?
Thanks again for all your help!
(I love that it’s so simple, only four ingredients, that I don’t need a recipe, I can just remember it! It will most certainly be much easier for me to make it than to go out and fetch some, to be honest.)
Yeah this is the first rise. It should still be rising even slowly in the fridge. If it isn’t rising at all that’s kind of a problem, but it likely is rising and because the dough is wet it just isn’t obvious. You should be able to tell when you take it out that the dough is full of gas.
Congratulations on successful bread baking!
Suggest you also take a look at no-knead bread. Here is the original New York Times Mark Bittman and Jim Lahey article: No-Knead Bread Recipe - NYT Cooking
Here’s a video: jim leahey no knead bread - Bing video
It leverages the cold ferment (keep it in the fridge a while) process and kicked off renewed interest in the slow ferment. It makes a great rustic loaf and is easy as all get out.
Thanks so much for clearing this up for me! I was pretty sure, but not positive, that the cold fermenting was indeed, the first rise!
No problem. Now the next step is to cut off a chunk of that dough after you cold ferment and before you shape your loaf. You should wrap it tightly in plastic wrap and freeze it for up to 3 months. When you go to make your next loaf you can thaw it out cut that bad boy into little bits and mix it into your dough. You can then skip the slow rise and you will still get bread with that great slow rise flavor or you can just work it like normal and you get something kinda closer to sourdough.
Of course the next step after that is making (or buying) and keeping your own starter. But be warned, keeping a starter is like keeping a pet. If you aren’t going to bake at least once a week it might be more trouble than its worth. But if you are… Well worth the trouble.
Also, because I am in the middle of a baking project right now myself (making pizza this afternoon) I thought I would post this, from Peter Rienhart’s website.
Stretch and Fold method of bread kneeding.
An additional technique to play with if you want to use really wet dough.
Starters are amazingly resilient, once you get a good one going (and I would recommend getting someone to send you or give you a starter rather than whipping up your own.) I’ve resurrected starters I haven’t fed in six or more months. As long as it’s kept in the fridge, it can last awhile. That said, it may take a few days to really wake it up and get it going. If you do go the homemade starter route, I recommend rye flour, and then after a few days, incorporating regular wheat flour for the feedings. Rye takes off much faster and with less hassle than wheat, in my experience. I assume it just has more yeasts and microbes on it already than wheat flour. (Most of the yeasts you get in a starter are from the flour itself, not the yeasts in the air.)
Hey, hey, now you’ve touched upon a frequent topic at our house. Hubby is always heavily promoting I keep a starter, but I don’t feel I really bake enough bread for it to make sense.
(He’s a Brew Master at a brew pub and, as a result, the boy is all about the yeast! He keeps a starter for brewing, of course. And it’s a titch odd to consider that all the beer he brewed last year was from the same starter! )
Baking up this (cold fermented) loaf should be an education in how it improves the flavour of the bread, I think. I’m looking forward to it. I’m also going to try what Johnny Bravo suggested; spraying down the loaf only once at the start, just to see what difference it will make to the crust.
This thread is great! I worked in a bakery many years ago and decided recently that I wanted to start making breads again, so I bought The Bread Baker’s Apprentice a couple of weeks ago and took my first swing at something this morning, making bagels for the family. The funny thing (and why I’m responding to your post specifically) is that stretching/folding is a method I learned 30 years ago, and so that’s what I did last night while setting up the sponge.
I wonder if this should become the default baking thread…