| Ingredient | Quantity | Baker’s Percentage |
|---|---|---|
| White flour | 750g | 100% |
| Water | 360g at 32°C to 35°C | 73% |
| Salt (should be posh but…) | 10.5g | 2.1% |
| Yeast | 2g or 1/2 a teaspoon | 0.4% |
So to start, he talks a lot about temperatures, and interestingly the water has to be between 32 and 35° C. So I put the water in a glass measuring jug and microwaved it for 30 seconds to see what temperature it gets to. 30 seconds, got me to 30° C, so another 10 seconds I think , I got it to 32 so maybe 10 more now. Now it was 34,35°, so that will do! So note for the future: 50 secs on 350ml of water warms it to 35 degrees.
Now to do the autolyse. I mixed the flour and water with the Danish dough mixer until it was all incorporated and then left it for 30 minutes. Just 2g of yeast is required which is tiny, so it might be better to use a measuring spoons, but our scales are just about accurate enough to measure that so I’ll gave it a go. The 10g of salt is a bit easier. After the autolyse the dough is reasonably easy to handle, even at 70% hydration.
I then added the salt and yeast ( onto different areas the dough, as raw salt is probably a bit brutal to the yeast). The stretching, folding, slicing with the fingers and the mixing went quite well. I used wet hands and re-wet them once, so that the dough doesn’t stick. They were maybe a bit too wet but it all adds to the hydration, which is no bad thing. After about 5 minutes , it was all incorporated and the dough felt pretty good (I should have done the window test ) and it was about 24° , which is what is required in the recipe, so I covered it and waited until the next fold, 10 minutes later
After 10 minutes, I gave it a fold, and then another one 30 minutes or so later. Then I left it for 5 to 6 hours until it had tripled in size, give or take? I think this is going to be influenced very much by room temperature so it could probably have taken longer.
So, after about six hours, it had expanded with some nice little air bubbles coming through and I thought it was time to shape it and prove it and then I will baked it that evening. In the future, I might just pop it in the fridge and bake in the morning. But, I wanted to follow the recipe as closely as I could, so I checked it after an hour to see if it needed baking.
One of the main differences of his method is that he puts the smooth side of the dough ball at the top of the bannetton, and then when he inverts it to bake. He doesn’t score it but allows the natural folds to burst to create the ears on the loaf. That will be quite interesting .
So it had risen reasonably well and it looked about right.
However, when I turned it out, onto the very hot Dutch oven, it had stuck to the cloth, which was the first, so I wondered if I had bothered to flour the cloth properly, not sure. Anyway, 30 minutes in the oven, see how it turns out. As it stuck to the cloth it of a mess going onto the Dutch oven lid
It looked and smelt nice when I took it out of the dutch oven after 30 minutes, and I gave it another five minutes to brown it a bit more. The book says 20 minutes, but it would be burnt too.a crisp if I did that.
I was in a bit of a rush to try it , so I forgot to take photos immediately after it came out of the oven, but here are some showing the interior etc. when it was half eaten.
So a decent crumb (hate that phrase) and it was pretty tasty for a one day, non sourdough bread. The next recipe is very similar but whole wheat mix. I will be interested to see what the recommended hydration is!