FoodBanter.com - Broken-Oven Bread (w/link to photos)

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Broken-Oven Bread (w/link to photos)

So at the culmination of my 72-hour bread process yesterday, I set the
oven to preheat and came back to check on it, finding it barely half
as hot as it ought to be. Oh dear, says me, my oven is busted. Seems
that the lower heating element (this is an electric oven) isn't coming
on. Not sure why yet, and I couldn't fix it just then, so I
improvised.

I put my baking tiles (four 8"x8"x1/2" unglazed quarry tiles) right
under the broiler for a long while until a thermometer beneath the
tiles showed just over 450F. So then I knew the tiles themselves were
pretty toasty. I moved the tiles down to the bottom rack and put a
couple of pans of boiling water on the top, just under the
broiler. Then I slid the loaves onto the tiles and closed up the
oven. The pans of water, in addition to making the oven somewhat
steamy, were to shield the loaves from the direct heat of the broiler,
which certainly would have burned them on top well before they'd been
baked all the way through. It worked pretty well; so well that I had
to remove the pans at the end of baking for about 7 minutes to get the
top crusts nicely browned.

The bread is 100% whole grain, with 11% whole rye and lots of chunky
stuff (seeds and intact grains), at 70% hydration with a tiny bit of
gluten added to counteract the less desirable effects of the rye and
chunky bits. No commercial yeast. I incorporated some of the
suggestions that various folks here have made to me over the past
couple of weeks (thanks!), and I am pretty happy with the results.
(Too bad about the oven, though.) More information and pictures are
he

http://wonderclown.net/photos/bread.html

--
Randall

"Randall Nortman" > in message=20
ink.net
presented http://wonderclown.net/photos/bread.html

(full-bodied, compact loaves with a complex constitution, seemingly
arbitrarily so)

Question: Why do you want to put all that stuff in your bread? Do=20
you know that you can make pretty good bread with just flour, water,
salt, and leavening?

Well, I don't know how long you have been doing it, but, for beginners,
the simple formula is a good one to start with. After that, almost =
anything
else added to the dough makes a good result more difficult to attain.

Of course, you may be one of those with a cultural predisposition for
doing things in most complex ways, so, if so, I apologize for such a
bland recommendation.

Your photo presentation is very good, and most interesting.

--=20
Dick Adams
(Sourdough minimalist)
<firstname> dot <lastname> at bigfoot dot com
___________________
Sourdough FAQ guide at=20
http://www.nyx.net/~dgreenw/sourdoughfaqs.html

On 2004-12-09, Dick Adams > wrote:
>
> "Randall Nortman" > in message
> ink.net
> presented http://wonderclown.net/photos/bread.html
>
> (full-bodied, compact loaves with a complex constitution, seemingly
> arbitrarily so)
>
> Question: Why do you want to put all that stuff in your bread? Do
> you know that you can make pretty good bread with just flour, water,
> salt, and leavening?

I specifically set out with this experiment to make bread with a lot
of seeds and intact grains in it, because I like to bite into bits of
stuff. I also make plain old bread without chunks, but variety is the
spice of life. Part of the fun of baking for me is coming up with new
recipes and new types of bread.

Or perhaps you were referring to the milk powder, malt syrup, and oil?
Yeah, those are questionable additions. Will Waller (who also was
very helpful in getting the technique with the intact grains right)
already pointed out to me that the milk and oil are likely detrimental
in sourdough. I like the added nutrition of milk (in particular, the
protein), but I will do a test without these additives at some point
in the future. (But probably after "the season", because things are
getting hectic around here.)

> Well, I don't know how long you have been doing it, but, for beginners,
> the simple formula is a good one to start with. After that, almost anything
> else added to the dough makes a good result more difficult to attain.

I have been baking bread in fits and starts for something close to 15
years. The loaves I baked 15 years ago (in high school) were awful.
My friends called it by a name not fit to print, but they still
gobbled it up when it was hot out of the oven. (Teenage boys will eat
pretty much anything.) I first started experimenting with sourdough
about 3-4 years ago, gave it up for a couple of years (switching to
baker's yeast because I didn't have a lot of time to devote to
baking), and then resurrected my starter several weeks ago, shortly
before I began pestering you all with questions.

> Of course, you may be one of those with a cultural predisposition for
> doing things in most complex ways, so, if so, I apologize for such a
> bland recommendation.

I certainly am one of those people (though more by constitution than
culture), but I don't consider your suggestion bland. To the
contrary, it is rather exciting to start with nothing but the basic,
essential ingredients and still produce something with excellent
flavor.

> Your photo presentation is very good, and most interesting.

Thank you! I went through a brief photography phase a year ago or so
when I got a digital camera, and wrote myself some software for making
galleries like this. (I'm a computer geek by nature and training.)
I'm happy to offer the code to anybody who wants it, though it's not
very user-friendly, and to customize it you must be able to write and
understand the Python programming language.

--
Randall

Hello Randall
I try to look at your web page but iT crashed my broswer "konqueror"
signal 11 (SIGSEGU) engoy this new group.

Joe Umstead

Randall Nortman wrote:

> So at the culmination of my 72-hour bread process yesterday, I set the
> oven to preheat and came back to check on it, finding it barely half
> as hot as it ought to be. Oh dear, says me, my oven is busted. Seems
> that the lower heating element (this is an electric oven) isn't coming
> on. Not sure why yet, and I couldn't fix it just then, so I
> improvised.
>
> I put my baking tiles (four 8"x8"x1/2" unglazed quarry tiles) right
> under the broiler for a long while until a thermometer beneath the
> tiles showed just over 450F. So then I knew the tiles themselves were
> pretty toasty. I moved the tiles down to the bottom rack and put a
> couple of pans of boiling water on the top, just under the
> broiler. Then I slid the loaves onto the tiles and closed up the
> oven. The pans of water, in addition to making the oven somewhat
> steamy, were to shield the loaves from the direct heat of the broiler,
> which certainly would have burned them on top well before they'd been
> baked all the way through. It worked pretty well; so well that I had
> to remove the pans at the end of baking for about 7 minutes to get the
> top crusts nicely browned.
>
> The bread is 100% whole grain, with 11% whole rye and lots of chunky
> stuff (seeds and intact grains), at 70% hydration with a tiny bit of
> gluten added to counteract the less desirable effects of the rye and
> chunky bits. No commercial yeast. I incorporated some of the
> suggestions that various folks here have made to me over the past
> couple of weeks (thanks!), and I am pretty happy with the results.
> (Too bad about the oven, though.) More information and pictures are
> he
>
> http://wonderclown.net/photos/bread.html
>

Worked ok for me
Ernie

"Joe" > wrote
> Hello Randall
> I try to look at your web page but iT crashed my broswer
"konqueror"
> signal 11 (SIGSEGU) engoy this new group.
>
> Joe Umstead

APOLOGIES TO THE GROUP: I tried to respond via private email, but the
poster's address is invalid and my reply bounced.

On 2004-12-10, Joe > wrote:
> Hello Randall
> I try to look at your web page but iT crashed my broswer "konqueror"
> signal 11 (SIGSEGU) engoy this new group.

I have just tested it in Konqueror 3.3.1 (using KDE 3.3.1) and it
works fine for me. What version are you using? If it's older than
mine, you might try upgrading. (The most recent release is 3.3.2; if
you're using something older than 3.3.1, you're way behind and should
probably upgrade anyway.)

If it's still crashing, I could fairly say "it's not my fault" because
my pages are strictly standards-compliant (XHTML 1.0 Strict, CSS2).
No funny stuff going on. No JavaScript. That said, if you're using a
recent version of Konqueror and it's still not working, I'm not going
to be annoying and tell you your browser is not supported; I'll work
with you and the Konqueror developers to figure out what's going
wrong.

Rather than following up publically to the group and annoying
everybody with a clearly off-topic discussion, I advise you to email
me privately at .

Randall