The Bread Chronicles

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Is there anything as good as fresh homemade bread hot out to the oven slathered in butter??

I have been wanting to make my own bread for a while now.  I even purchased a Miele steam oven so that I could work on perfecting my homemade bread.

But perfection doesn’t happen overnight! Enter… The Bread Chronicles.

Chapter 1. Let’s roll this back several months ago.  I tried to make my own starter from scratch following the recipe from Eric Kayser’s Book of Bread (side note: Eric Kayser is a French chef who makes some of the best bread ever! Go to his cafes if you are in Paris).

If you don’t know anything about bread, let me break this down for you.  Bread needs a starter.  A starter is made of yeast, flour and water.  You feed the starter every day to keep it alive.  Yes, the bread is literally a living thing.  You may have heard about the Boudin San Francisco sourdough starter that has been growing for 150 years – it’s true (if you remember from high school biology, yeast is a clone of itself).

So I named my starter Groot, after the Marvel superhero since he is a tree and regenerates and my starter is a, uh, yeast and regenerates. Well, after a few bad loaves of bread, it got contaminated with some other mold I think because I didn’t have a proper place to store it.  I got mad since I had been babying this thing for a few weeks and I gave up.

Enter this year! I started with King Arthur Flour’s Sourdough Stater and Crock Set.  Made it easy on myself.

Chapter 2. We decided to use a brotform and made a Country Loaf from Eric Kayser’s book.  While it looks good, it didn’t taste that great.  It also didn’t rise like it should. 

Below is after baking.  Just okay. For those that have a steam oven, I’m including the steam oven settings because there isn’t too much on the internet about baking bread with steam ovens. Here were the settings I baked this one on:

1. Combisteam, Convection Bake, 105F, 8 min, 100% humidity
2. Combisteam, Convection Bake, 125F, 4 min, 100% humidity
3. Combisteam,Convection Bake, 410F, 15 min, 50% humidity
4. Combisteam,Convection Bake, 425F, 20 min, 0% humidity

I think part of the problem with the one above is the oven settings.  We thought letting the bread start with higher humidity at a lower setting would allow the yeast to expand more.  It ended up tasting just… meh.

Chapter 3. I tried King Arthur Flour’s Rustic Sourdough Recipe.  The result: crust was pretty good.  The bottom was soggy (didn’t use a baking stone – decided from here on out we needed to use a baking stone).  But it didn’t rise like it does in the picture.  I still ate half of it! Pretty tasty still.

Here are the oven settings for this bread:

1. Combisteam,Surround, 210F, 10 min, 100% humidity
2. Combisteam,Surround, 425F, 8 min, 100% humidity
3. Combisteam,Surround, 425F, 20 min, 0% humidity

Chapter 4.  We tried a Sourdough Boule recipe from Bouchon Bakery.   As you can see, this is the best one yet!  The crust was perfect.  But it didn’t rise as much as we were hoping.  Also, we did a half recipe, which could have been part of the problem (only a half recipe because we were short on starter!)

Here are the oven settings for this one:

1. Combisteam,Convection Bake, 425F, 1 hour, 0% humidity.  *NOTE* You place your baking stone in the oven for the hour and let it heat up. Do not put your bread in yet! This is just to heat up the oven and heat the stone.
2. Combisteam,Convection Bake, 425F, 20 min, 100% humidity.  *NOTE* 1 min before the steam injection starts, put your bread onto the stone, make your lame marks and then close the door.  You want to do this before the steam injection starts so you don’t get a face full of superheated steam!
3. Combisteam,Convection Bake, 425F, 10 min, 0% humidity

A picture of the crumb.  Nice air pockets.  

After this promising success, I was determined to make it again but with the full recipe.

Chapter 5.  Ok, since I had made a half batch last time, I made a full batch this time for the Sourdough Boule from Bouchon Bakery.    The thing I didn’t do that the recipe stated was to the form the boule. Instead I used the brotform.  I also proofed it in the warming drawer instead of room temp (it was cold today and the house was cold).

Here are the baking settings, same as above.

1. Combisteam,Convection Bake, 425F, 1 hour, 0% humidity.  *NOTE* You place your baking stone in the oven for the hour and let it heat up. Do not put your bread in yet! This is just to heat up the oven and heat the stone.
2. Combisteam,Convection Bake, 425F, 20 min, 100% humidity.  *NOTE* 1 min before the steam injection starts, put your bread onto the stone, make your lame marks and then close the door.  You want to do this before the steam injection starts so you don’t get a face full of superheated steam!
3. Combisteam,Convection Bake, 425F, 10 min, 0% humidity

Here it is!  SUCCESS!!!! I think next time I’ll bake it for an extra 5 minutes, since I like my crust a little crunchier.  Below is a  picture of the crumb. Quite tasty!

We made grilled cheese with it.  Dubliner cheese by Kerrygold makes for the best grilled cheese sandwiches, FYI.  Pick up a block of cheese at Costco for the same price as a little chunk at Trader Joe’s!

And that ends my Bread Chronicles!

Things I’ve learned from baking bread:

Patience is required.  Hurry up and wait.

Good things are worth waiting for.

Practice makes perfect.