Today I'll write you a little bit about a small batch of bread I made. Today I made the bread in an oven tray, testing how well I can get a flat bread to rise and what the finished bread will look like.
Let's get started.
I'm boring and added the finished bread to the top to get a nice preview picture.
I mixed 1 kilogram of flour (200g wholegrain and 800g regular wheat) in 650 grams of water.
I mixed it only lightly without kneading and then left it to be for 60 minutes. This is what is called "autolysis". Not sure if it's actual chemical autolysis, but it's called autolysis technique in baking. The point is that gluten "net" is forming when the flour and water are left to...
Dissolve? Not sure.
It's easier to explain in Finnish. But most of you don't know any Finnish, so you suck.
I had activated my sourdough the previous evening by mixing some of my sourdough in wholegrain wheat and some water, then leaving it in room temperature. As you can see, the sourdough is happy and bubbly.
Now I just added the wheat-water ball into the sourdough. I kneaded the wheat-water -ball into the sourdough and added approximately 20 grams of salt in it.
I was suppsed to mix it somewhat carefully, but I was kneaded it somewhat roughly. Maybe a bit too roughly.
But don't worry baby, I still love you. I can change! Don't leave me!
After kneading the sourdough into the ball, I had now the dough.
I took the dough and folded it a few times, then put it in the bowl. The folding isn't supposed to be rough, but if I've understood right, it helps the "bubbles" in the bread to even out and the bread should have a good consistency if it's folded enough many times.
Over the time of 3 hours I folded the dough 5 times.
Pull and fold, pull and fold.
I used three trays for the bread and there was enough dough to fill them just a little bit. I could have used only 2 and that would have been a perfect amount, but as I had purchased 3 trays I wanted to use them all.
But before I put the dough in the trays, I had smothered them up with a little bit of butter. This ensures the bread doesn't stick too much in the tray and comes off easily.
Or maybe it's just for the flavor.
I let the trays rise up for 4 hours, then I put them into fridge for 16 hours before baking.
When I took the trays from the fridge, I used a really sharp knife to make cuts in the bread dough.
Then I set them to the oven (which was 220 Celsius degrees) and baked for approximately 30-40 minutes.
I'm very lazy to follow strict instructions and schedules nowadays, so I used a digital temperature meter. I waited until the bread temperature was 96 Celsius degrees inside the bread.
The finished breads again. Hooray!
You can see the cut in the middle bread didn't go completely through the "gluten net" or whatever we should call it. It didn't rise as much as the other breads and didn't get the fun looking surface on the top of the bread.
The bubbles are quite consistent and same size.
This photo above is really ugly. I should have taken a better picture but I was so hungry I didn't want to stick around taking a bunch of photos hoping some of them looks good. Especially with my phone camera.
I should have had my real camera and taken some amazingly beautiful photos for you. But I didn't.
I am ashamed of it.
And I will carry this shame with me till I die.
But below is the last photo! The bread which wasn't properly cut. I think that looks a bit like a zipper which is mostly closed, but someone said a comment about... lady parts. I still can't see it that way, but someone might.
The merrier it is to eat it.