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I am looking at breadtopia.com at at SFBI for proofing baskets. Both have both the coiled brotform and the lined wicker baskets. Will loaves proofed in one of the lined wicker baskets pick up any of the wicker design at all, or does the lining prevent that? Is there any reason (other than wanting a design/no design) to choose one over the other? Will heavily hydrated breads stick to one or the other more?

I was getting antsy because I hadn't used my sourdough starter for 2 weeks! That's a long time for me. I needed use it. Well, I used it for ciabatta as you can see here and for Poliane's Miche.  The sourdough ciabatta that I baked the night before was enough to make my Sunday... Almost 80% hydration, following BBA's poolish version and replacing the poolish with my lively sourdough starter. I had fun making this one and I am beginning to believe that I get better results when I use the sourdough starter compared to commercial yeast. This ciabatta turned out pretty good. Very light as I hoped... the crumb was just lovely. Creamy and light flavor (not too yeasty or sour). It was very much liked by the family members and one loaf was gone during breakfast, as you can see with a simple fennel-mint salad. I gotta try making this ciabatta in our wood-fired oven and see how that turns out. Hope you like the photos. I tried to use natural light as much as I can...

Happy Bakes!

Hazim

I began serious refreshment of my rye and one of my white SD starters on Thursday, and Friday morning mixed up some pre-ferments. We're traveling to see family at the end of the week, and I like to bring frozen loaves as gifties. I also wanted to play around some more with herbed loaves made into rings. The rye pre-ferment, made up only of rye flour, was also laced with caraway seeds.

The Jewish style rye is about 35% rye flour, 30% clear flour and 35% AP. There is a splat of olive oil, a squirt of honey, a bit of vital wheat gluten, pinch of ascorbic acid, some salt and enough water to make a tacky-stick-to-your-fingers-if-you-touch-it dough. Mixed in the Electrolux for 5 minutes after autolyze, stretched and folded a few times, then retarded in the fridge overnight. Removed from the fridge early in the morning, allowed to warm up for a hour or two, scaled, proofed, slashed, baked on a pre-heated stone at 450 F, then painted with a "cooked" cornstarch and water mixture.

The herbed rings were made from a basic AP 65% hydration sourdough, with the addition of olive oil to tenderize the crumb. Mixed and partially kneaded in the Electrolux, stretched and folded a few times, then retarded in the fridge overnight. Removed from the fridge in the morning, allowed to warm up for a hour or two, then I did the following:

Each ring was made of up two, 1 lb pieces of dough. Each 1 lb piece was rolled into a rectangle, brushed lightly with olive oil, then various combinations of the following were put on:

Thai fried shallots
Chopped garlic
Penzey's dried Italian herb mixture
Za'atar
Salt
Pepper
Grated Manchego
Rosemary (fresh)
Thyme (fresh)

Each rectangle was then rolled tightly into a coil. Two coils were intertwined and linked together. The rings were allowed to proof, brushed with olive oil, sprinkled with sea salt, then baked at 375 F on a heated stone.

More photos here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/25648800@N04/sets/72157615947969429/

Boron

I've been a member of this site for little over a week and made a few posts on various topics.

I’m a retired engineer living in England, near Oxford. I’ve been trying to bake bread for at least the past 30 years, but my early attempts all came out like house bricks, “very substantial” and “filling” were the most flattering comments. I could never get the dough to rise much again after knocking it down and putting it in the tins. Then I was lucky enough to install an oven (Neff) with a bread proving setting (about 30 degrees C) and I’ve never looked back.  I now have a baking day whenever we run out of bread and make about 10 loaves at a time. The purists amongst you will wince when I say that we freeze the bulk of the cooked loaves, but it works for me.

I’ve always used our trusty Kenwood Chef Major (UK food mixer) which can easily handle the dough from 1kg of flour, and has mixed 1.5kg betimes. Although I’ve tried lots of recipes, including Peter Reinhart’s  and sourdough, my family’s favourite is a granary bread made from Doves Malthouse flour. Doves is an organic flour miller widely available in UK supermarkets and health food shops.

• 1kg bag Malthouse flour
•  Scant 600ml warm filtered water
• 2 tsp Doves dried yeast (I find this better than other makes)
• 1 tsp salt
• 1tsp sugar (any)
• A good glug of sunflower oil (or similar)

Mix the dry ingredients; with the mixer running add the oil and then the water. Keep stopping to scrape down the mixer bowl and adjust the hydration until the dough forms into a ball on the dough hook and the bowl is clean. Kneed at slow speed (1 – 3) for about 4-5 minutes, stopping now and then to scrape the dough off the hook.

Mix a second batch and rise them both in the proving oven.

When doubled in size, knock down and combine both batches, kneading them together. Of course, if you are mixing by hand, you can make them as one, but I’m lazy – let the machine do the hard work. You should have about 3.3kg of dough. Cut into 3 equal pieces and form into loaf tins (Tefal 9X5X3in = 23X13X7cm – can’t get these any more – best non-stick heavy aluminium pans I’ve ever had - suggestions please). Allow to second rise until the dough is domed to the rim of the tins, and then bake at 220 degrees C for about 35-40 minutes. The loaves will fall out of these tins. If they look a bit underdone, quickly return naked loaf to the oven for a further 5 minutes. Cool, eat or freeze.

I’ve had passable success with sourdough recently, but the loaves have spread too far after shaping and come out too flat. In general I’ve found that the hydration recommended in most recipes is too high for my liking and reducing it by 5-10% makes dough that is less sticky and keeps its shape when baked without a tin. I cannot get on with high hydration recipes.

Today I’ve been baking pizzas. For these I use Jamie Oliver’s recipe - 800gr Canadian very strong white flour (Waitrose) and 200gr of semolina, 650 ml warm water, salt, sugar, yeast and olive oil.

Enough rambling.