Baguette-OffSo, this ended up not being a fair fight. When I got home last night I realized I didn’t have any all purpose flour so I had to make the poolish and scrap dough for Barenbaum’s version with white whole wheat flour. It ended up being a much larger portion of the final dough than I had expected. I kept going, after buying more all purpose, but the ones I made from her recipe aren’t that great. The dough didn’t get nearly as airy and it has a funky sour taste. The Hamelman recipe turned out well, however, and the process was much simpler than barenbaum’s. Just dump all ingredients together, a couple turns, rise, shape, proof and bake. No night before stuff like in Barenbaum. I guess I’ll have to make her recipe with all purpose at some point to see what the real recipe is like. You can see the difference in sizes, which is partly due to the final dough being slightly lighter weight in Barenbaum’s, but also due to less rise and I gave it much more time than the book recommended, although I skipped refrigerating the shaped dough for 5 hours because I ran out of time. My shaping can use some work, too. But the Hamelman’s turned out pretty well. The pans here are the same size so you can see the difference in the sizes of the dough before cooking. I baked the Hamelman’s on the left first so the Barenbaum’s on the right got an extra 30min of proofing. Not that it helped! I’m still skeptical that Barenbaum’s will turn out well because of my bias from reading page 1. But I’ll try it with all purpose next weekend. Brews UpdateAnother crappy picture but my Elysian ESB is finally drinkable! I was surprised that it took so long to bottle condition. I brewed the Hefeweizen the same day. I used Wyeast American ale for the esb and Omega Hefeweizen ale for the hefe. The esb was bubbling like crazy in less than 24 hours but the hefe took 3 days to start bubbling noticeably and never looked as active. I figured the yeasts would show similar activity during bottle conditioning but they were opposite. The hefe was ready to drink when I tried it at 2 wks but the esb took over 3 weeks to get fizz. Not sure if it was the yeast or something I did. It’s good now, though!
Im planning to make an IPA kit but it will have to wait til the end of April. I’m working the next couple weekends so I won’t have time. I’m really looking forward to all the hops, though. I love that smell!
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something of a lazy weekend. I blame these guys... Managed to make a couple loaves of sourdough, however. Used the recipe from Flour Water Salt Yeast. Slightly mellower taste than Hollywood’s and the crumb was a little tighter but I didn’t work the dough nearly as much. I’m just guessing that’s why. Was going to use leftover starter to make sourdough biscuits from Bake from Scratch magazine but ended up needing the starter I was going to use for the biscuits to keep my starter going as I had used the rest for the bread. Oh, well.
Next weekend I’m going to have a baguette-off. Barenbaum’s The Bread Bible vs Hamelman’s Bread. I just started looking through Barenbaum’s book, even though I’ve had it awhile, and on the first page of chapter 1 she says that yeast is a plant. I figure if she’s that wildly inaccurate about one of the main ingredients of bread (there’s only four basic ingredients!) then her recipes can’t be too great but I’m going to try to get past it. It’s all on the baguettes! I’ve decided to record my experiences in the kitchen on-line, mostly so I won’t lose them like I probably would a journal or other handwritten record. I’m not the most organized person. I decided to start home brewing beer mostly because I found out that making my own whiskey would be illegal. And I decided to keep with the yeast theme in my latest bakes, making bread and croissants and other yeasty things. I am determined to perfect my croissants, which to me means they must have chocolate! BreadToday I decided to make the Saturday White Bread from Ken Forkish’s Flour Water Salt Yeast. I had to go in to work tonight and it was the only one in the book that looked like it would fit in to my schedule. I’m a little short on flour, so I used 900g of Gold Medal all purpose flour and 100g of King Arthur White Wheat in addition to the 3.5C water, 21g salt and 4g yeast. I have made this recipe in the past using King Arthur all purpose flour and I have to say the dough this time was a little more challenging to fold and shape. I had a similar experience with some croissants I made recently using Gold Medal. The dough just felt much softer than with the King Arthur. The bread looks like it turned out OK, though maybe a little overproofed. My sister tried it after I left and said the taste and texture are pretty much the same as before. Anyways, toast and jam for breakfast when I get home! CroissantsI didn’t make any croissants today but this is a picture of a past attempt using the recipe in Paul Hollywood’s How to Bake. These actually turned out really well but I haven’t had as much luck with subsequent attempts. I’ve found that when I use the egg wash the recipe calls for they brown too quickly on top and I take them out before they’re done. I think I forgot to use it on this batch, actually. I also can’t bake 2 batches in the same oven at the same time. The batch on the bottom towards the end always gets too brown underneath, even when I’ve switched them halfway. I’m planning to try the recipe from the most recent bake From Scratch magazine so we’ll see how that goes. BeerI didn’t make any beers this weekend. I started my home brewing adventure a few weeks back using some malt extract and malt extract + grain kits from the Northern Brewer website. Figured it would be an easy way to get used to the process and see if I actually like making beer. The Bavarian Hefeweizen was malt extract only, so was super easy to make. It only required one fermentation stage and was actually pretty good! Very strong banana taste and really reminded me of some of the Hefeweizen I had in Germany. My first brew was the Goose Island Sweet Porter which was a mix of steeping grain and then boiling in the malt and hops. I didn’t take a picture of the kit but that’s the final product on the left. I was disappointed with this one. I thought the taste was very weak and it really left a dried out mouth feel. There’s a word for that but I can’t remember it at the moment. Some of the reviews online said it takes a little longer for this beer to develop so I’m going to taste some again in a week or so.
The kit on the right is the Elysian Wise ESB since you probably can’t read it in that terrible picture. It was the last one I brewed. I tasted it recently and, while the flavor seemed good, it hadn’t developed much carbonation yet so I’ll try it again in a week or so. I’ve got a few IPA kits to try and then I plan to brew my way though Charlie Papzian’s The Complete Joy of Homebrewing in case you’re wondering what’s up next. Cheers! |
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