I have been going over some recipes in a book I have, and it has both
a recipe for "Pain au Levain" and "Whole Wheat Sourdough" both of which
are stated as making two 1 1/2 lb loaves.


The Pain au Levain calls for 5 cups of AP flour, 2/3 cup of Whole Wheat
flour, 2 1/2 cups starter, 1 3/4 cups water, and 2 1/2 tsp salt.

The Whole Wheat Sourdough calls for 1 cup AP flour, 2 1/2 cups Whole
Wheat flour, 2 tbls honey, 2 cups starter, 1 1/4 cups water and 2 tbls
salt.

It seems to me that these different flour weight recipes could not
possibly each make two 1 1/2 lb loaves.

After contacting the creator of the book by email, this was the
responce:

"Actually there is very little difference in the outcome of the
recipes. For the dough you will have 3 oz difference in the weight of
each loaf. But because whole wheat will absorb more liquid when you
bake it the difference will be less then an ounce in the two recipes.
All-purpose flour will not absorb as much liquid so more moisture will
bake off."

Does anyone care to elaborate on this? I am lost (again).

hutchndi

Whole wheat flour has fiber and gluten that binds more water and it
does not release much during baking if compared to white flour that has
only gluten...

I can't really comment on all that cupped white stuff, but what puzzles
me is a claimed accuracy of less than one ounce with cup measurements.

Then, 2 cups of starter and 2 1/2 cups of starter - how gassy is it,
when one measures and how fluffy is the flour and how moist?

If the author makes those claims, maybe you made a good point and he
cannot face it straight. He measures in volumes and comes back in weight
to you.

Well, let's add it up, just the flour and water:

my cup flour is 156 g
my cup water is 230 g

I white:

5 2/3 x 156 = 880
1 3/4 x 230 = 403
1283

II more whole wheat:

3 1/2 x 156 = 546
1 1/4 x 230 = 288
834

+ maybe 50 g for the honey and what's 1/2 cup difference in starter?

There is maybe a 300-ish g difference on flour and water, on a
supposedly finished 750 g loaf which is going to loose so much more on
one loaf, to differ less than 30 g?

And that 300-ish g difference is 3 oz before baking? 28.5 g/oz x 3 =
85.5 g - sure!

Looks to me - that author has a problem. Maybe his water collects
outside on the bottom of one loaf to evaporate? You could ask him.

I would not waste my time with this. If you start contacting all the
authors of stupid or incorrect sourdough references in their
literatures, you got your work cut out for you.

Samartha


hutchndi wrote:
I have been going over some recipes in a book I have, and it has both
a recipe for "Pain au Levain" and "Whole Wheat Sourdough" both of which
are stated as making two 1 1/2 lb loaves.


The Pain au Levain calls for 5 cups of AP flour, 2/3 cup of Whole Wheat
flour, 2 1/2 cups starter, 1 3/4 cups water, and 2 1/2 tsp salt.

The Whole Wheat Sourdough calls for 1 cup AP flour, 2 1/2 cups Whole
Wheat flour, 2 tbls honey, 2 cups starter, 1 1/4 cups water and 2 tbls
salt.

It seems to me that these different flour weight recipes could not
possibly each make two 1 1/2 lb loaves.

After contacting the creator of the book by email, this was the
responce:

"Actually there is very little difference in the outcome of the
recipes. For the dough you will have 3 oz difference in the weight of
each loaf. But because whole wheat will absorb more liquid when you
bake it the difference will be less then an ounce in the two recipes.
All-purpose flour will not absorb as much liquid so more moisture will
bake off."

Does anyone care to elaborate on this? I am lost (again).

hutchndi

_______________________________________________
Rec.food.sourdough mailing list

http://www.mountainbitwarrior.com/ma...food.sourdough

"Samartha Deva" wrote in message
news:mailman.1135840531.30171.rec.food.sourdough@w ww.mountainbitwarrior.co
m...


I would not waste my time with this. If you start contacting all the
authors of stupid or incorrect sourdough references in their
literatures, you got your work cut out for you.

Samartha



Actually this is from "King Arthur Flour Baker's Companion", a cookbook
not
completly devoted to breadbaking, alot of cakes and pastry, but with a
section on bread and sourdough. Questions and comments are encouraged
through their website, so I didnt have to hunt anybody down. I havent
actually tryed either of these recipes, but as this is a popular book
(judging by its rare availability in my public library), I would not be
surprised if there are many home bakers who have had trouble with this, if
the difference is as much as you calculate, and the company does not
acknowledge a problem with the recipes.

hutchndi

hutchndi wrote:
"Samartha Deva" wrote in message
news:mailman.1135840531.30171.rec.food.sourdough@w ww.mountainbitwarrior.co
m...


I would not waste my time with this. If you start contacting all the
authors of stupid or incorrect sourdough references in their
literatures, you got your work cut out for you.

Samartha

I would not be
surprised if there are many home bakers who have had trouble with this, if
the difference is as much as you calculate, and the company does not
acknowledge a problem with the recipes.

hutchndi

That just goes to prove that you should check out thoroughly the people
you take advice from before spending time, effort and/or money on what
they say. Always find out from others they have advised if they think
it's worth it. Way too many recipe books give just plain wrong advice
and recipes. I was glad Father Christmas didn't bring any recipe books
for me this year : -)

Hutch, you've got excel it isn't too difficult to write a file that
converts all these different measurements for you so you can compare
with tried and tested recipes. If a recipe is going to tell you to bake
a loaf with a weird hydration or ingredient content you won't waist
time and ingredients on it.

TG

"hutchndi" wrote in message
news:tEQsf.10920$NS.6659@dukeread04...







"Samartha Deva" wrote in message
news:mailman.1135840531.30171.rec.food.sourdough@w ww.mountainbitwarrior.co
m...


I would not waste my time with this. If you start contacting all the
authors of stupid or incorrect sourdough references in their
literatures, you got your work cut out for you.

Samartha



Actually this is from "King Arthur Flour Baker's Companion", a cookbook
not
completly devoted to breadbaking, alot of cakes and pastry, but with a
section on bread and sourdough. Questions and comments are encouraged
through their website, so I didnt have to hunt anybody down. I havent
actually tryed either of these recipes, but as this is a popular book
(judging by its rare availability in my public library), I would not be
surprised if there are many home bakers who have had trouble with this, if
the difference is as much as you calculate, and the company does not
acknowledge a problem with the recipes.

hutchndi

IIRC, that book extols the virtues of weighing ingredients when baking and
all the cake recipes are "bilingual" for those who can't be bothered to buy
scales. I can't remember if the bread recipes are also given in weights but
I would think that they are.
Graham

ham" wrote in message
news:FHSsf.208595$ki.141798@pd7tw2no...


IIRC, that book extols the virtues of weighing ingredients when baking and
all the cake recipes are "bilingual" for those who can't be bothered to
buy
scales. I can't remember if the bread recipes are also given in weights
but
I would think that they are.
Graham



You are right, here they a

Pain au Levain
1 pound, 5 oz AP flour
3 oz WW flour
14 oz water
1 pound starter
2 1/2 tsp salt


WW Sourdough
4 1/2 oz AP flour
14 oz WW flour
10 oz water
1 1/2 oz honey
14 oz starter
2 tsp salt

hutchndi wrote:
"Samartha Deva" wrote in message
news:mailman.1135840531.30171.rec.food.sourdough@w ww.mountainbitwarrior.co
m...

I would not waste my time with this. If you start contacting all the
authors of stupid or incorrect sourdough references in their
literatures, you got your work cut out for you.

Samartha



Actually this is from "King Arthur Flour Baker's Companion", a cookbook

Well, whatever - seems there is some investment there. Maybe it's a good
book overall and this is just a glitch which can be tolerated.

They should respond properly and admitting that there maybe something
off instead of trying to smart you out. I would hate that - just giving
me some junk of info to make me shut up.

Thinking about it, that a finer flour takes up less water may be - but I
would think one can use a wider range of hydration to make bread with a
particular four. In any case, the water is absorbed in the dough the
main factor in water evaporation I found to be the shape of the loaf.
Smaller loafs - baguette style loose most, I found. Maybe flatbreads
even more.

It bothers me that this kind of baloney is coming from a flour company -
they seem to be giving baking classes.

Even Hamelman got something wrong with his pumpernickel description but
this book is so great, who cares about this little thing.


Samartha

Smaller loafs - baguette style loose most, I found. Maybe flatbreads
even more.

It bothers me that this kind of baloney is coming from a flour company -
they seem to be giving baking classes.

Even Hamelman got something wrong with his pumpernickel description but
this book is so great, who cares about this little thing.


Samartha

Yeah, we all make mistakes : -) it's what you do to put it right that
makes you better. It looks like KA don't going to get better anytime
soon.

TG

TG wrote:

It looks like KA don't going to get better anytime
soon.

I added up the weights and got 54 ounces plus salt for the white bread
and 58 ounces plus salt for the wheat. The white bread has slightly
more salt than the wheat 2.5 teaspoons to 2 teaspoons... so when they
responded to Hutch via email and said the difference was 3 ounces and
the whole grain would retain more water they were exactly correct.

I think your earlier point about converting to weight via Excel is spot
on. Converting to metric via Excel is simple and it would have made
things obvious (even for Hutch g). This business with cups and spoons
is for the birds. But KA knows it. It's the publishers that insist on
keeping it going.

Both Samartha and Mike Avery have good spreadsheet calculators that are
easily off-loaded from their sites. And decent gram scales are cheap
too. Unless you simply have to have an Edlund.

Will

On 29 Dec 2005 10:58:43 -0800, Will wrote:


TG wrote:

It looks like KA don't going to get better anytime
soon.

I added up the weights and got 54 ounces plus salt for the white bread
and 58 ounces plus salt for the wheat. The white bread has slightly
more salt than the wheat 2.5 teaspoons to 2 teaspoons... so when they
responded to Hutch via email and said the difference was 3 ounces and
the whole grain would retain more water they were exactly correct.


It's interesting how different people have come up with woldly different
weights for these recipes. In fairness, I suspect you really should look at
sacks of KA flour to see how many grams they think are in a cup of white and
wheat flour.

However, the other side of the matter is.... how many home bakers really
care if their loaf is the weight the recipe says it should be? If you're
selling bread, customers get upset if your loaves are underweight. In the
end, I don't think it's that big a deal for most of us.

Mike

Mike Avery wrote:

It's interesting how different people have come up with woldly different
weights for these recipes.

Mike... I used the weights Hutch published earlier in the thread. They
are from KA.

However, the other side of the matter is.... how many home bakers really
care if their loaf is the weight the recipe says it should be?

I agree. A finished loaf is whatever it turns out to be.

Weight does help me understand relationships though. 3 cups of flour
and 1 and a quarter cups of water don't translate (for me) as well as
1000 grams of flour and 650 grams of water. In the metric world I can
capacity scale for various baskets or switch to cloches easily. I also
know what to expect from the dough, handling-wise, since the water
ratio is explicit.

My youngest son has got me into pastry. I would be lost there without
my scale and thermometer g.

Will

No.

It don't make no sense.

"Mike Avery" wrote in message
news:mailman.0.1135883551.763.rec.food.sourdough@m ail.otherwhen.com...



"It's interesting how different people have come up with woldly different
weights for these recipes. In fairness, I suspect you really should look at
sacks of KA flour to see how many grams they think are in a cup of white and
wheat flour."

According to the weights page in the afore mentioned book, KA says their
unbleached AP flour weighs 4 1/4 oz per cup. Whole wheat is shown as 5 1/4
oz per cup.


However, the other side of the matter is.... how many home bakers really
care if their loaf is the weight the recipe says it should be? If you're
selling bread, customers get upset if your loaves are underweight. In the
end, I don't think it's that big a deal for most of us.

I didnt mean to start a thread trashing KA recipe books or anything, I was
simply confused by the differences, and thought I would double check with
you people before trying the sourdough whole wheat recipe and having it come
up short. I dont really care what specific weight my bread ends up anyways,
my concern comes from the fact that I am trying to use these new brotforms
of mine, they are 1 1/2 lb sized, and if I raised too little dough to the
top it might be overproofed.

hutchndi

hutchndi wrote:

I dont really care what specific weight my bread ends up anyways,
my concern comes from the fact that I am trying to use these new brotforms
of mine, they are 1 1/2 lb sized, and if I raised too little dough to the
top it might be overproofed.

Hutch....

That's exactly the point. You always want to scale a formula to fit
your basket, banneton, brotform, loaf pan, cloche etc. Once you've
established the weight range for each container you can either scale
the dough up front for the equipment you wish you use or... change
equipment to accomodate what you've made. That way the proofing volume
always fits the container and you aren't tempted to push or short a
proof.

I like to do cold oven starts. So it's great to build just the right
amount of dough to fill the cloches (cold start) and subsequently fill
a couple of brotforms for a hot bake. It sounds complicated but it
isn't. After a while it's just a useful habit.

By the way... do you suspect KA reduced the starter in the WW, relative
to the white levain, because they'd included honey?

Will