Sactown Magazine
Bread Winner
Arden-Arcade-based home baker turned cookbook author Gregory Berger simplifies the art of loafing around in his new book.
July 7, 2021
Bread Baking Basics
, just came out. Can you take us back to a time when you yourself were learning the basics of bread?
I was always a home cook, never really did any baking. But when my son was born he’ll be 11 in August I was a stay-at-home graphic designer. I had a lot of time between projects and while he was taking naps. I read about sourdough in a book by [slow food advocate] Michael Pollan called
A year ago, in mid-March 2020, when we were all
staying at home for two weeks to flatten the curve, I jumped on the sourdough bandwagon. Despite regular experiments with no-knead loaves, quick breads and other floury delights (and hosting two seasons of a podcast about bread), I d never actually kept a sourdough starter of my own. But boredom led to baking, so I stopped loafing around. At the same time, I was wrapped up in another popular early pandemic pastime: really, really wanting a dog. I spent hours searching online for a hypoallergenic rescue pup, to no avail. Apparently I wasn t the only one who had that idea, or whose partner had dog allergies.
gerhard
No matter what route you choose it will take at least 1/2 hour for your oven to stabilize to your target temperature, with the baguette that might be enough to bring it to room temperature.
Gerhard
toddvp
my plan was to set the oven timer so it s already hot when I get up. Normally I get the dough/loaves out and proof for a few hours to bring it up to temp, but I m just seeing how uber-efficient the process can be for the sake of schedule.
All at Sea Has anyone baked loaves that were retarded overnight in the fridge and put almost literally straight in the oven?
But it would be easier to guess if you told us the final dough weight. A full sized rimmed baking sheet for most residential cooks is technically a half sheet . The pan you describe as 9x13 I would call a quarter sheet pan. But my experience would say that any final dough weight of about 1000g would produce a half sheet of focaccia (a full sized sheet for home cooks). I ll go one step further and suggest that one full recipe for Basic Country Bread dough produces two loaves, which in my humble opinion would fill a professional sheet pan (twice as much as what we use at home). In short, I suspect halving the recipe would fill a sheet pan most home cooks consider full sized (and two of your 9x13 pans)
I don't know what I'm doing wrong. I literally followed the directions exactly as written in Chad's Tartine Bread book and also watched YouTube videos. The first time I thought I knew the problem, I used cold flour and I think the temperature fluctuated too much between high and low. I can't keep temperature exactly the same but this 2nd try, I measured the dough directly and