First loaves of bread

[CanuckJim]

Jay,

Can't recommend a spiral enough. I've had my counter-top Esmach SP5 for years. It's a horse. Very little maintenance (grease the chain every year or so). The friction factor is 26, as opposed to around 38 for a KA. The hook and bowl shape combination is simply awesome. The resulting dough is very well combined, silky, barely requiring hand kneading at all. I should get a commission from the San Francisco Baking Institute because of the number of people who have come here for courses, then immediately ordered one. One lady from Minnesota ordered hers by cell, standing in my kitchen. Google Santos, too. They have a counter-top fork mixer of about the same size. One of my course participants from New Zealand ordered one, and she's quite satisfied with it. Makes a lot of bagels for her teenagers.

My mixer will hold 8 lbs of flour at a shot, but I usually restrict it to around 6 lbs to cut down the mess. There are, of course, larger models. Still, that's a lot of pizza balls. It's a heavy (deliberately) piece of gear. Doesn't walk around on the counter at all, even with enough dry bagel dough to make forty of them. We catered a wedding held on a property with a WFO (another student of ours). We made sixty dough balls in a few hours, retarded them overnight in the fridge in round containers and took them to the site in iced coolers. Made a lot of converts to Caputo and a WFO that night.

I know these things are not cheap, but far as I'm concerned the mixer owes me exactly zip.

Jim

[texassourdough]

Hi Jim!

You are a living advertisement!

I am almost certain to get one. My wife will roll her eyes and I will have to figure out where to put it, but...I know I am going to increase my baking once I finish my dissertation! Thanks for the comments! We discussed the SP5 several years ago and I knew you loved it but your stories are getting better!

There is one item I would like to verify. I had interpreted the capacity of the mixer as 8 pounds of dough and you seem to indicate it is 8 pounds of flour. I recognize that filling the mixer to the brim is at least messy, but that would imply a capacity for at least 13 pounds of dough! And your norm of 6 pounds of flour would equate to at least 10 pounds of dough. And...perhaps even more conveniently, it would easily take a full 5 pound bag of flour which is way more than a KA will handle.

Being able to get up in the ten pound range is a big deal to me so, assuming I interpreted this right that makes the SP5 even more perfect!

Look forward to your response.

Thanks!
Jay

[CanuckJim]

Jay,

The SP5 manual was translated from Italian, not very well either. One of the instructions is not to clean it when it's running. Nope, we are talking six pounds of flour here, not dough. I find if I go any higher than seven, though I could, it gets a bit messy until the flour is hydrated.

Here's what I used for the pizza catering job:

3035 gr/6.69 lbs flour
1973 gr/4.35 lbs water (65%)
6 gr IDY (7.5 if not being retarded overnight)
24 gr/.86 oz sea salt (or a bit less according to taste)

Result: twenty-four 210 gr dough balls for 10" pizzas

The mixer didn't even blink.

Jim

[texassourdough]

You have my attention! That is enough dough to really make sense and pull down the effort on large batches!

I guess I know what I will ask Santa for!
Jay

[CanuckJim]

Jay,

Should have specified I used Caputo Tipo 00 Pizzeria flour in the formula.

Jim

[Gromit]

OK, I am persistent if nothing else.

Ye who have been commenting on this thread, please let me know what you think of the crumb on this latest effort. I have also re-posted last week's loaf for comparison.

I made the following changes:

1) I made this all in one day--no overnight retard.
2) I tried to handle the dough minimally. (It seemed I was still squeezing every last bit of gas out of the fermented balls as I was shaping the boules.)
3) I divided the dough into four 17 oz. loaves instead of three 23 oz. loaves. This was an accident. Because of this, I let the loaves proof an extra couple of hours to try to get them to fill the basket.

I also put the loaves into an oven closer to 600 deg. than 500, so they burnt a bit on the bottom. I fed pizza to thirteen this evening and had been working on bread in one form or another from the moment I woke up, so I was ready to get these loaves in the oven and call it a day.

[ThisOldGarageNJ]

Looks just like what I buy at the bakery they call it swiss bread, It seems they call the same one with larger holes in it Italian loaves, I think it looks great, How did it taste ?

[egalecki]

I wouldn't have let it rise more to try to fill the basket. I think that's why you have that void on the one loaf's top. It's also why you didn't get any rips in the top- when you overproof you don't get the extra lift in the oven. I change the size of loaves all the time- I just don't need a giant boule most of the time, and the smaller ones freeze just fine. The trick with rising is to get it doubled or nearly doubled- so if you started with a softball, you should end up with a cauliflower. So to speak. Dutch's finger poke is really the best way to tell.

The crumb does look better. The color is nice, even with the excess carbonization of the bottom. I've been there and done that. Just cut it off before you eat it! Question is, how did YOU like it?

Since you are using proofing baskets, I wonder if you could just portion out the dough, roughly stretch it or round it to fit, and just plop it in. You don't need the same surface tension to hold the dough together since they're not freestanding as they rise. You might get less deflation that way. I don't know if this is good practice, though. I'm sure Jay or someone else will know that. I know my mom used to take time and shape her loaves, and now she just pulls blobs off and plops them into the pans. (she makes an old-fashioned white yeast bread, using milk) Her loaves don't look as smooth on top as they did, but the crumb inside is indistinguishable.

You'll get it eventually. I forget- have you done much baking previously? If not, well, you've sort of jumped in the deep end of the pool without water wings. Never fear- it's just flour and water and wild critters- you'll get the hang of it. Oh, and your experience of "just wanting it done" is why I rarely bake after pizza. I'm usually tired, hot, and my kitchen is a wreck, and I'd rather clean it up and crash!

[Gromit]

The bread tastes very good. I was happy with the taste before, but the airier texture made it even better. I bumped the salt up to 2.5% and it gave it just enough to be able to taste the salt through the sourdough; I will have to sample it more over the next couple of days to decide whether I prefer that amount of salt. These loaves had a cooler, moister texture than before. I don't know whether to attribute that to the shorter baking time (~ 20 min) or to the amt. of proofing. Yes, I feel like I'm in the deep-end; I haven't done any baking other than pizzas on a stone before this.

[Dutchoven]

I agree with Elizabeth in that they might have been a bit overproofed. 80% proofed is our target most of the time. Color looked great to me even if the bottoms burned a bit. Surface tension is sort of important even if you use baskets, at least IMO. You can really do it by just stretching and folding for rounding and then after a short rest just pull the ends to the middle and pinch it to seal, you can even pinch it together to seal it after you put it in the basket.
There may be a shaping video somewhere with canuckjim's hands doing it somewhere and if I can figure it out maybe I can post one
All the best!
Dutch