My weekend baking with the addition of a new baker
I started my weekend bake on Fri. night by mixing up a starter for a Hamelman Sourdough. Sat. morning I started mixing the final dough when my 13y.o. daughter came in the kitchen and asked if I was making any of my Plain ol' White Bread. Since I was already dedicated to what I was into I told her to wash up she was gonna make some bread. I had her weigh out each ingredient as I read her my recipe, and told her how to mix, then knead and such. She really got into it and once it was in the bowl I wrote out each of her times she needed to degas and fold. She did very well, and is very proud of her results, which she should be. Made two nice loaves, one of which was given away to a guest we had last night. The other is here.
After all was said and done, I was able to get my Sourdough fired up and here is a final loaf of it.
Its probly not the nicest sourdough ever made, but boy it sure is good.
So far today I have my Reinhart SD coming along from Crust and Crumb. Made the stiff starter last night, making the final dough today, suppose to bake following day from making final dough. I believe that I will end up baking it later tonight though.
Here it is before and after final mixing.
And here it is after rising
TT
Comments
You tell her that for me, TT. She's made a loaf nice enough to be the envy of any of us 'older-timers'. I reckon she should feel proud. That's really sweet, first that you took the time and had the patience to work with her, and second that she was willing to give up a teen-age Saturday morning to hang out and bake bread with her dad! Something for both of you to cherish for years to come. (And here's me not making a single wise-crack!) The sourdough looks good, too, nice slashes, beautiful color. I'll bet your house always smells terrific, and the neighbors wonder why the lights are on all night long...and who's the dude living in your bread bowl..?
Everything looks beautiful and Daughter #1 I can't believe that's your first loaf! You can sure tell you are daughter-of-tattoedtonka! The yeast bud doesn't fall too far from the parent! :D
Very very cool you two.
Such a great thing, cooking with the no-longer-little ones! Your daughter is only a year or two younger than my stepson was when he first started making bread with me. Of course, a year or two later he was totally blowing me out of the water, making up recipes of "a handful of this and a handful of that..."
Have a blast, you two!
edh
How wonderful, TT! I just made cookies with my 4 yo and it was about more than I could handle. I need to work on my patience.
Beautiful loaves--I think the sodo is so gorgeous and brown!
Katie in SC
Oh Katie,
I remember baking on 4 year old time. The trick is to not think of it as baking. It's more like playdough that you'll eat later. They love it, though, and it's well worth it in the long haul!
Look at TT's big kiddo!
edh
My little girl is eight. She is like my little shadow. She's always asking if I have any scrap dough she can have. When I make bagels I usually have a odd piece of 2-4 ounces. that she gets to play with. She rolls it out, she makes little faces and shapes. I give her some colored sprinkles from my cake supplies and she goes to whipping up something special.
By the time she is done she has this odd little piece of dough that is blended in a bunch of different colors and wants me to bake it with my stuff. I do, it alwasy comes out hard and crunchy, but she insists on eating it. She even makes yummy noises the whole time while eating. They are some of the nastiest little dough blobs to exit my oven, but to her they are masterpieces.
How cute they are when they are small....
TT
I told my daughter if she is gonna keep this up she will have to come up with a clever little screen name for herself.
I added a couple new photos above.
One is the crumb of my SD, the other is my Reinhart SD after rising.
I know I dont have a whole lot of SD's under my belt, but I tried two recipes this weekend for a Plain SD. One was Hamelman's from Bread, the other (the one I'm doing now), is from Reinhart's Crust and Crumb. I really like this Crust and Crumb one. The recipe calls for a 3 day process just to produce a couple big loaves, but its the dough that is really impressing me.
The Hamelman recipe SD is good, it tastes very good, but I have issues with the temp's, times, and rise of the dough. It called for me to bake at 460'F for 40-45 minutes. The first loaf I did this and it bakes it black. Very little rise, it seemed that the high heat kept the dough from having a chance to rise proper before sealing up the crust. That one went right into the waste. The second one, the one pictured above was baked at 375'F for 35minutes. It came out much nicer.
The Reinhart SD from Crust and Crumb, is the one I am doing now, and boy do I like this dough. It rose very nice during its rest, the dough was easy to mix up, and the side notes published in the margin of the recipe helped explain a lot. We will see how it bakes out and tastes, but so far I love it.
This book is one I just got this weekend, and I love it. I was abit unsure by the name of it "Crust and Crumb- Master Formulas for Serious Bread Bakers. I thought, boy, this will probly be way over my head. But let me tell ya- This is a great book for anyone into Bread Baking. Along with every recipe, there are commentaries that explain alot about the dough, ways you could change it, and answers to alot of "whys?". Great book... I will making more of these for sure.....
TT
I'm glad to hear about Crust & Crumb, TT. I have wondered the same thing about whether it was too advanced.And I will follow your advice next time with the dough. I do always give a little piece of sandwich bread dough to the kids to play with, since it's stiffer and not very tacky. They love playing with it. Maybe I should get the sprinkles out next time, too! (That's how I get them to eat oatmeal--with sprinkles. I don't buy the instant kind, so our oatmeal isn't sweet enough to earn their approval, but a little splash of color makes it more appealing.)
Katie in SC
And great photos. Your girls will remember baking with Dad and those will be great memories and maybe we'll have a couple more breadmakers for the future. We need all we can get.
I'm going to post photos of my Sunday baking in a few minutes. I can't get a good shot of the crumb most of the time. Sometimes I get lucky but I don't know how it will work tonight. I'm waiting for the batteries to recharge....then I'll be back. weavershouse