These week I found in a forum the statement from an experienced user that dough should not ferment after kneading but have just a short periode of resting (about 30min). A conclusion I disagreed very energetic, because in my opinion the first fermentation is necessary for giving flavor to the dough and strenghend the gluten. (The dough we discussed about was a dough with 2 % fresh Yeast and a mixture of whole wheat flour and white flour)But to my disappointment he gave me no reason for his opinion, he refused to discuss the topic with me, he just give me the feeling, that I am so stupid that I do not know about this.

So this statement left me puzzled and I read and reread a lot in my baking books, but all of them have fermentation periodes (1 hour and longer) and the explanation I learned: the dough gaines flavour and strength while fermenting. At the moment I have no reason to change my recipes.

But I would like how you handle your dough, and why? Do you just rest him (not more then 30 min, dough rise not visible) or do you ferment him (around 1 hour, dough double his volume)?

But I did not spend my week just discussing about fermentation, I also bake bread, of course with a fermentationperiode of 1 hour 😛 Continue reading →

Pane francese is italian and means french bread. It is the Italian version of baguette. Having the look of a ciabatta, the crumb is similar to a baguette.

It is a very tasty bread with a rustic look, that contains a small amount of whole wheat flour and such a minimal amount of yeast, that I really doubted that the dough would rise.  But never underestimate these small creatures. The long fermentation period give them enough time to proliferate and the bread had a nice oven spring. Continue reading →

Somewhere in germany, in the middle of the night: a dark figure sneaks out of the sleeping room and tiptoes into the kitchen. The alarm clock shows three o’clock. In the kitchen, the figure opens quietly cupboards and take out bowls, yeast and flour and prepares a poolish.

Then I tiptoe back to bed, think about if this is a case of “acute baking delirium“. But I plan to bake ciabatta this afternoon, so who  cares 😉

The Ciabatta that Steve from Bread cetera bake using the douple flour addition/ douple hydration, is very impressiv. White open crump, perfect crust, thats how a ciabatta should look like. And that exactly what I want to bake, too! I baked ciabatta maybe two or three times before, and was never satisfied.I had some biger air cells, but most of the crump was more or less dense. Continue reading →

My Boyfrind is always very happy, when I bake pain au chocolate for breakfast on sunday. I like crossinats more, but he loves them, but – and that’s important- they have to contain TWO bars of chocolate. He looked very suspiciously at the recipe for pain au chocolate in my copy of Bertinets “Crust” and declared it as wrong, because in this recipe the pain contains only ONE chocolatebar!

Steve of Bread cetera use two chocolatebars, too and his technique to roll them into the dough seems better then the one I used untill now. I always had the problem, that some of the pain au chocolate unfold in the oven again, so I used his methode this time.

When I roll the butter into the dough, I normally give the dough one hour to rest in the fridge between two rounds of rolling and folding, but this time I had some time pressure, so I decided to follow the recipe of “Crust” and reduce it to half an hour.

Not a good idea! Although I get a light interior, it was not so nice layered like normal. Next time, I will use the one hour cooling periode between the rolling again! Continue reading →