Greeting, You have stumbled onto a site currently in the very early stages of development. Look around if you must but be prepared to be unimpressed.
The goal of this project is to look at ways the bread recipes can be adapted. The primary questions I will attempt to answer are, given a standard recipe written to use white bread flour,
- How do you adapt it to use whole wheat flour or other grains?
- How do you adapt it to a no knead recipe?
- How do you adapt it to use tangzhong?
- What other techniques are advisable and when? autolyze? slow fermentation?
Other questions will be added as I progress.
For this project I will be using the recipes in Baking Artisan Bread, by Ciril Hitz as starting points or baselines. Initially, I will focus on Formula One: Baguette Dough. This may take a months to work through. Once I am satisfied with my basic techniques, I will progress through the remaining formula testing my techniques.
Many of these techniques are ones I have used before. This project is an attempt to consolidate things I know (or think I know) and to integrated techniques into a more complete framework.
I will not be repeating his formula in this blog (apart from baker percentages as appropriate). If you are not familiar with baking, you will need a copy of Hitz’s book. (At the time I am writing, it was selling for $7.01 on Amazon.com). If you are as experienced baker, this may not be necessary. If you are an advanced baker, then why are you reading this blog?
Before we get started, there are two more items to be discussed in the next two postings. First, I will provide a quick review of bakers percentages. Next, I will provide a selected bibliography of texts I will be consulting for this project.