Center to the types of items I think I want to point out here is Bread.\u00a0 Nothing I\u2019ve come across is both so simplistic and complicated at the same time.\u00a0 Four key ingredients and a lifetime of struggle in the same small package.\u00a0 Not actually being a huge fan of bread, I make and eat a lot of it.\u00a0 To me, it\u2019s like something I yearn to perfect yet will not ever.\u00a0 I\u2019d like to make my first bread post of what I can only assume will be many to be generic and personal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I like making dough.\u00a0 I\u2019m not one of those people who like the feel of it nor the outcome.\u00a0 I like the science of it all and the difficulty.\u00a0 What is the humidity in my kitchen today and how does the recent and current humidity impact my flour\u2019s basis of hydration?\u00a0 OK, now I need a humidity-controlled proofer.\u00a0 What do you mean there aren\u2019t any of those on the market for home cooks that have any level of accuracy?\u00a0 Well shit.\u00a0 Be it proofers, ovens, or even consistent quality of flours with specified protein \u00a0or ash content, the odds are stacked against us compared to professional bakers.\u00a0 Hell, we don\u2019t even use the same type of yeast and are often stuck in the mindset of volumetric measurement as our base for communicating recipies.\u00a0 It\u2019s not easy trying to perfect a loaf or a pie without some help and I\u2019m trying to fix that.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I purchased a proofing cabinet that allows for induction based heating to hold the cabinet at a specified temp but it\u2019s not terribly accurate and the method of \u2018adding humidity\u2019 to the cabinet is a joke \u2013 a small tray over the heating source.\u00a0 It is much better than a \u2018warm place in your kitchen\u2019 that many recipes indicate but by no means comes close to the bulk ferment rooms that are well controlled in the commercial world.\u00a0 However, I\u2019ve watched commercial baking process go awry as well.\u00a0 Seeing truckloads of bread getting thrown away just because they were a shade too dark was my first major awe moment in baking.\u00a0 It looked perfect to me and was completely edible.\u00a0 However, the longevity of that bread wasn\u2019t capable of making it to the market simply due to the lost hydration \u2013 the crumb would be way too brittle.\u00a0 That, along with the intoxicating smell, is probably what got me started on my journey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The next step of my journey was to steal my parent\u2019s bread machine that was collecting dust and try to see how it performed. Let\u2019s just say instead of giving it to someone else, I ensured it died a horrible and well-deserved death. Then I went and bought 50 lbs of flour and every day I tried a single recipe of \u2018sandwich bread\u2019 from The Bread Bible by Rose Levy Beranbaum. Most of the time it came out horribly. One day, it didn\u2019t and it was the best home replication of commercial sandwich bread I could imagine. My problem is, as someone who is trying to control and notice as many impacting variables as possible, I knew that I wouldn\u2019t be able to replicate it reliably. It was the softest bread I\u2019ve had ever that didn\u2019t include chemical extenders or commercial modifiers. I started trying to replicate it, and that became my journey to master bread. More to come, but sadly much more yet to learn.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Center to the types of items I think I want to point out here is Bread.\u00a0 Nothing I\u2019ve come across is both so simplistic and complicated at the same time.\u00a0 Four key ingredients and a lifetime of struggle in the same small package.\u00a0 Not actually being a huge fan of bread, I make and eat […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[8,9],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.underanalyzed.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.underanalyzed.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.underanalyzed.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.underanalyzed.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.underanalyzed.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=104"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.underanalyzed.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":105,"href":"https:\/\/www.underanalyzed.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104\/revisions\/105"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.underanalyzed.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.underanalyzed.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.underanalyzed.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}