Reinhart Broom Bread - flat / frisbee with Breadtopia Batard Clay Baker
Hi, everyone. I've been attempting Peter Reinhart's Broom Bread recipe and while it bakes reasonably 'normal' if I use a traditional loaf pan, I can't for the life of me get it to come out as anything other than a flattish, frisbee-like loaf if I use my Breatopia Clay Baker (Batard).
I've been using PR's recipe without modification and home-milled White wheat (from Wheat Montana berries, that I've used for years and years in many other breads). Using recommended grind settings - fine grind for the Soaker, and normal grind for the Biga. Roughly 24 hours between making Soaker and Biga until mixing up the final dough. Using SAF instant yeast that I've also used for years. Measuring everthing except the vegetable oil with a gram scale, including yeast and salt.
I had problems with the first rise previously (using a KA Rising Bucket) and thought it might be because we keep our house relatively cool (66). So, this time around, I created a custom program on my ZO Breadmaker (BBC-X20) to just rise and tried that instead of the rising bucket. The manual says this is roughly 82.4 degrees, which I realize is a bit warm for a yeast bread, but the dough rose beautifully - perhaps too much so in hindsight. Did the first rise for 15 minutes pre-heat (to get to 82.4) then roughly an hour 15 rise. (That "might" have been too long, and I plan to try again with maybe 15 pre-heat and 30 minute rise). Then de-gassed gently, pulled and folded (edges into center), shaped roughly into a ball, flipped over and did the "pull, turn and push" thing to try to build some surface tension and get the dough into a batard shape. Seemed to come out pretty good - so, I put it into a proofing basket lined with parchment paper and let it rise for about an hour in the oven with the light on to get some light warmth. This seemed to go well also - bread rose to a good height and seemed ready to bake.
In hindsight, maybe I should have pulled the rising dough out of the oven sooner as it took maybe 45 min (wasn't really timing) to get the oven to 475 with my Breadtopia clay baker to temp.
Anyhow..I attempted to lift the dough out of the proofing basket with the parchment as a sling. It spread out a little when I lifted it, but still seemed OK. Got it into the baker, and it did deflate some. "No problem", I thought..should get plenty of oven spring once it starts cooking. WRONG!
Checked it at 20 minutes, and it was pretty flat / almost frisbee like. And it was way hotter than expected - roughly 180-190. Decided to lower temp down to 450 and did 10 more min, which was plenty. Pulled at 205-210 so could have done less after the initial check.
SAME EXACT recipe and process cooks up just fine in a glass baking pan. Plenty of rise during baking, but I was able to use a cast iron pan loaded with ice cubes to get steam also - which I couldn't do with the clay baker.
I'm baffled. I did read that clay bakers in general pull moisture AWAY from the bread, so that you get a crisper crust.
Isn't that a bad thing for oven spring? Doesn't oven spring require the dough to be able to continue rising WITHOUT hardening? And isn't that why we frequently add a skillet of ice cubes or boiling water when baking in a traditional baking pan? (FWIW, that's exactly what I did when making this with the glass baking pan - full cast iron skillet of ice cubes, which put off plenty of steam).
It would seem that the clay baker is the issue. I cook other breads (high hydration) just fine, and the baker's formula says this is 79% hydration so I'd think I "should" get similar performance to my 80-85% hydration breads. Nope!
Anyone have any ideas? I'll admit to being completely stumped on this one.
Thanks for any and all help..
I have an oblong clay baker from Breadtopia that I usually use to bake a baguette in it, and I have never had an oven spring issue, it always balloons up reliably, and I have never used ice cubes, I usually spray water to the dough before I close the lid. I am pretty sure the clay baker is not the source of your problem based on what I am reading, sounds like the dough was over fermented to me. What kind of flour is it? How much instant yeast did you use? In my limited experience, instant yeast could move really fast if an incorrect amount is used and especially with a wholegrain loaf.
Thanks for the reply..
Regarding possible over-fermentation - could be. But it's also a typical PR bread with Biga and Soaker, both of which get prepared ~24 hours before mixing up the final dough. Maybe I let the final dough go too long on first rise (best I can remember, 15 minutes pre-heat in the ZO followed by at least an hour, maybe 75 min rise).
Doesn't Breadtopia recommend not spraying dough with water prior to baking? It does seem like this would help but also far as I know contrary to what they say to do?
Flour is home milled (via Whisper Mill) from Wheat Montana white wheat berries (high protein content - I've used this for probably 10+ years on many breads, pizza doughs, etc). PR recommends fine grind for the Biga and regular for the soaker, which I did. All flour was measured to the gram using a pretty precise gram scale I've used for a really long time reliably.
Instant yeast is per PR's recipe - again, to the gram (as was brown sugar and salt..also measured to the gram).
My best guess is too long of a first rise (would that be 'fermentation' on a PR bread that uses pre-made Biga and Soaker)? or possibly too long of a proofing while waiting for the oven and Breadtopia baker to come up to temp (best I can remember, an hour or so proof followed by another 30+ min for things to get to temp).
Either that, or my shaping of the dough didn't develop enough gluten structure.
Note that I still have a really hard time scoring, so was only able to get minimal and probably not deep enough.
I also didn't spritz the dough.
Would appreciate any and all other suggestions..
TIA..
I did not pay attention to what Breadtopia recommended, I was just doing what I thought was the right thing to do and knock-on wood I have not had a problem with my clay baker yet.
I see you were using a biga, that could be a source of overfermentation. How did you prep the biga? My biga shown below is not a dough, it was just threads of partially hydrated flour with about 20% loose flour in the mixture. This was 24 hours later in my basement, it did not grow at all, it looked exactly like when I first put it together. Was yours like this?