Monday, January 30, 2017

Breadpocalypse has finally ended.



This all started over Christmas. Mr S. had a week off and went full obsessive on trying to get his bread recipe to work. He'd been actually trying to get the "perfect" bread for like two years! I mean, he wasn't working on it every weekend, but from time to time he'd try and it just wouldn't work out the way he wanted. It tasted great, but he never got big bubbles.  And everyone knows you need big bubbles because that's where the butter goes.

Anyway. Over the holidays he doubled down and I think made bread like every day. It's all a blur now. I mean, bread is like one of my favorite things but I was at the "slow down cowboy" stage. I'm not used to eating bread pretty much every day.  I kept hoping he wasn't going to make me stop liking bread. Seriously.

You can learn a lot of things on youtube, but bread is sort of tricky. Even with all those tries in December it still wasn't coming out light enough. Then this weekend he went crazy and just decided to go on a bread marathon.



The numbers at the top are hydration levels. The loaf and the ball are from the same batch. It's weird how exactly the same bread batch can taste so different depending on what it's baked in. For the previous two years I think he'd been using hydration in the 70% level. But it turns out that 80% makes airier bread and allows the bubbles to form more easily.

He also found out that his pet (bread starter) had become ill. I call it his pet because he had to feed it all the time like a pet. He ditched it in December and just got yeast from the air. Which with his previous try seems to not be strong enough. He was at least able to get big bubbles with the yeast from the air, but the bread just wasn't light enough. Still delicious bread, but you can see the difference from the first photo. Right?

2 comments:

  1. The title made me wonder whether you were snowed in ...

    OMG THERE'S TWO MILLIMETRES OF SNOW ON THE GROUND

    MUST GET TO THE SHOPS FOR MILK, BREAD, MARMITE, AND MELTY CHEESE

    OR IT WILL BE THE APOCALYPSE FOR US ALL! :-)

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  2. OMG. Melty cheese.

    The last time it "sort of" snowed here I ran outside in my shorts and bare feet. But if I were, at least I'm covered now in the bread department.

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