gavinc's blog

This is a Hamelman’s recipe that I’ve baked a few times. It is 75% Whole-Spelt flour that I stone-milled the day before baking. The Pate Fermentee is made 14 hours before mixing. I love the taste of this bread as it is full flavoured and quite different from our everyday Vermont sourdough loaf.

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I have a quest to improve the rise and softness of a 100% Whole-Wheat Sandwich Bread. This is the third time baking this and I have been tweaking the formula with each attempt. There has been a gradual improvement with each bake and this time I got a good rise, soft crumb, and wonderful flavour. Debra Wink has graciously given her advice and ideas given that it is her recipe in Hamelman’s 3rd Edition of Bread.

The key for this bake was to raise the protein per cent of my whole-wheat flour. I can only buy 10.8% protein wholemeal flour here and DW is currently using WWF that is 16-17%. She suggested I try Vital Wheat Gluten to raise the protein per cent. I searched TFL for ideas and found alfanso’s June 2017 comment describing how to use a Pearson’s Square to calculate the amount of VWG to add.

Flour mixing - High gluten and pastry flour vs AP flour | The Fresh Loaf

I followed the instructions and set up a spreadsheet. I know that the protein in my WWF is 10.8%, the VWG is 75%, and the desired 16% protein flour. The calculation arrived at a baker’s per cent of WWF 91.9% and VWG 8.1%.

I mixed the dry flour ingredients thoroughly before adding in. I immediately noticed very good gluten development while mixing.  I was pleased that the dough behaved as DW described.

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Today I baked Debra Winks 100% Whole-Wheat Sandwich Bread from Hamelman’s Bread Edition 3. I never thought that 100% whole-wheat would produce such a soft and pleasantly tasty sandwich loaf. I milled the whole wheat yesterday, but I’m not sure of the protein level as Debra recommends about 14% protein. Debra also recommended some recent changes to the formula and process tweaks for the home baker that I adopted. This was my first attempt and I’m very happy with the result, however, I will increase the dough amount for these loaf pans (21 x11 cm / 8 ½ x 4 ½ inches) as they would be a better sandwich slice if taller.

This was a very different process than what I’m used to and have extended my experience and knowledge.

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I don't think I could fit in a third loaf. Two 750-gram loaves are my maximum per bake.

Cheers,

Gavin

My original post about making the dough loader is at DIY dough loading peel | The Fresh Loaf

I was urged to make a short video about using my DIY dough loader. This was made today, loading three baguettes onto the baking stone. You can check out the video on YouTube using the below link. 

https://youtu.be/ZxXpd8GcTho

Here is a picture of the finished bake:

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I made these a while ago and thought to post them to my blog during our 4th COVID lockdown (bored). I learned how to make these during Chef Jacob Burton’s online culinary boot camp.  I learned the bun sizes for large, regular and slider buns.

155 g each for large (4.5 inch) buns - about 114 mm

100 g each for regular size (4 inch) buns - about 100 mm

55 g each for slider size (3 inch) buns - about 76 mm

A well-formed bun was baked using foil ring molds held together with a couple of staples.

The brioche bun recipe is bread flour 100%, whole milk 60%, salt, 1.6%, yeast 3.6% (IDY 1.2%),eggs 20%, sugar 3%, warm water 4%.

My favourite is the regular size and suits 4 ounce/113-gram hamburger patties formed to a 3.75"/9.5 cm diameter.

Here's a link to the recipe: Hamburger Brioche Bun - Regular Size (4" Diameter) | Stella Culinary

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This is my first attempt at baking Hamelman’s bagels. Dough made and shaped the night before, then refrigerated overnight, then boiled and baked early this morning. I also tested my DIY bagel boards. Hand-mixed, kneaded and shaped. The final shaping was to join the ends to seal the ring, however, my arthritic hands wouldn’t quite manage, but generally very pleased with the results. Tasted very nice and slightly chewy. Cream cheese at the ready!

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This is my submission to the Community Bake - The No Comfort Zone Bake.

The write up is here: 

Community Bake - The No Comfort Zone Bake | The Fresh Loaf

Cheers,

Gavin

I wanted to post about baking three baguettes at the same time in our home oven and how easy it was to load the doughs onto the baking stone using my DIY dough loader.

Developing the dough went well as did the shaping, proof and moving the dough to the loader. Trouble struck when I scored the dough as my lame was blunt. The lame dragged the dough rather than cutting neatly, resulting in jagged and ugly scoring. My concerns are evident in the baked loaves.

What did go well was the ease of quickly loading the baguettes into the oven, evenly spaced without too much loss of heat or steam. I have successfully maximised the capacity of the oven and baking stone. These baguettes are each 315-gram dough and 36cm long.

The crust was crisp, and I am reasonably happy with the crumb.

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Getting ready for our camping adventure over Easter with family. Baked these Hamelman's Traditional English Hot Cross Buns today. I may have to bake another lot. These are 75-gram dough each; formula below.

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