1st step in 1st attempt

Well I made it to work today, on time, even with the cruddy weather we are having here in Connecticut this morning. I also managed to do the very 1st step in my 2 day plan. It was not easy to find the 5 minutes to add my old dough to the water and flour this morning. I ended up with quite the bad hair day because of it, although if I hadn't hit the snooze button at least 5 times… but anyway; I broke up the little old ball of dough I had saved from my last batch of bread and soaked it in warm water at the bottom of a good sized plastic Tupperware container. I failed to mention in my little grid from yesterday that the old dough should be about a walnut sized piece. My piece was actually more like small plum size so I added a touch more water, better too wet I think. It's all stirred together and sitting out, covered with plastic wrap in my kitchen. I so wish I was home to sniff it, I love the smell of rising dough.

A preliminary 2 weekday bread baking plan

Day 1 - early AM before work	Mix a cut up piece of old dough in 1/4 cup warm water and add 2/3 cup flour to make my "old dough starter"
Day 1- early PM	Add 3/4 cup flour and 1/4 cup water creating my "second stage starter"
Day 1- late PM	Mix final dough using the second stage starter plus another 3 1/3 cups flour, 1 1/3 cups water and 1/2 tsp yeast. Mix in the Kitchen Aid with dough hook 5-8 minutes, sprinkle with 1 tablespoon kosher salt while it mixes. Cover and let rise overnight in refrigerator (attempt #1) (attempt #2 will rise on the counter)
Day 2- early AM before work	Shape the loaves (reserve a piece of dough for next time)
Day 2- all day	Let the loaves rise in floured towel lined baskets on the counter
Day 2- as soon as I get home from work	Preheat the oven to 500 degrees, steam the oven and then bake the bread

So this is what I've come up with for my 1st plan of attack for having fresh bread every other day on a working moms schedule. I adapted it from a great recipe in Julia Child's "Baking With Julia". We'll see how it goes. You can see for the last step on Day 1 I have 2 attempts listed. I'm going to try each of these ways of rising the bread and see how it effects the final product. So I guess tomorrow morning I start the 1st step! I'm glad I saved a piece of dough from my last batch of bread! Hmm that means I'll have warm fresh bread Friday night. I was going to make pizza for dinner that night but maybe pasta and a salad instead...

The photo loaf

Well the photo you see here for my blog is a result of today's bread baking. I am trying to develop some type of a plan and recipe that allows me to bake fresh artisan style, well developed bread every other day. Generally that shouldn't be that difficult a thing but I am working with some interesting constraints (but I suspect fairly common for working people). I have 10 minutes, tops, in the morning to devote to bread, an hour at most before dinner and about 3 or 4 hours in the late evening.

Last night I started a poolish. Using a formula found in my "Bread Baking" book I mixed the flour and water and what amounted to not much more than a tiny pinch of yeast together. It was really hard to figure the amounts since everything was in weights. That was okay for the flour and water but I don't have a super sensitive digital scale so measuring the .03 ounces of yeast that was called for in the "formula" was near impossible. I went with 1/8 of a tsp. I left it overnight in a loosely covered tupperware bowl.

This morning, making me late for work, I mixed the formulas remaining flour and water for a minute in my Kitchen Aid. I let that sit in the bowl for 10 minutes. I heard 20 minutes is recommended but I didn't have that long, then I added in my poolish which had bubbled a bit and expanded slightly despite the small amount of yeast I had put in it. Last, I added 2 tsps of yeast and started up my KA with the dough hook. I sprinkled kosher salt on the dough while it mixed. I think I used about a tbsp. but I didn't measure. I let it knead for 6 minutes before turning it back into the poolish tupperware bowl, covering and sprinting out the door to work at 9:15.

Hubby was home at 3:00 today so keeping it simple I told him to sprinkle some flour in the bowl and fold the dough over a few times. My plan was that the dough would have another 2.5 hours to rise back up. When I came home I was going to gingerly cut the dough in half, place it in a floured cloth lined basket and let it rise another 1/2 hour while the oven and baking stone heated up.

When I came in the door at 5:30 I found my husband folding the dough again and sprinkling more flour. After a brief panic attack I decided to go ahead with my original plan to let it rise 1/2 hour and then bake. I was really worried that the bread, having lost a lot of it's air 1/2 hour before baking wouldn't recover and would be dense.

I split the dough into two loaves, one smaller, to bake fast so we could eat it with dinner and the other larger which I could give a bit more rising time. I have old double ovens and I usually bake in the bottom, so while the bottom heated to 500 degrees F the top oven was warmed a bit by the oven below. I put my formed loaves in that top oven to rise. My little loaf actually gained some loft and really took off when I slid it into the super hot steaming oven. The result was a pretty good loaf of bread. The family loved it and I was just so happy the bread hadn't been ruined. The second loaf with a bit more rise time came out even better. I'm still striving for a crisper, chewier more "Artisan" style crust but for my 1st documented attempt it wasn't bad!

My 1st post

I decided to start this blog with the hope that it will keep me focused on my goal of enjoying the little things in life. One of my favorite "little things" is baking bread. I have purchased some books on the topic, searched the internet and visited bread baking enthusiast message boards. From all of those activities I have learned a great deal about bread baking, I have also learned how much there is to know and hence how little I actually know. I'm also finding that no matter how much you read about it, bread baking is all about trying things for yourself. So here on this blog I will chronicle the trials, tribulations and success I encounter while learning about bread.