Astute readers might notice that I've jumped from "Part 10" to "Part 13".
I've had some bad bakes. One I just kind of f'd up, and another one I used mystery flower (which I do from time to time because I'm not good at labeling things) and it turned out very over proofed. Two loaves went to the compost, but the other four were decent enough to give away. I guess. People always seem happy to receive bread.
At any rate, with two recent failures under my belt I decided to go back and look at what worked before (+10 points for writing this stuff down) and start from there again. But I'll change little things anyway.
So this bake was six 600g loaves, with dried rosemary at 68% hydration. I also decided to not use any malt like I have in the past. I'm not sure how I feel about it, and I think my loaves brown enough without it anyway. Baker's percentages available.
One other thing I did for this bake and which I was doing previously but had not for the past two was to give the dough a 30 minute autolyse before adding the salt. I have mixed feelings about this. I usually use coarse sea salt which takes a bit longer to disovle into the dough, but maybe that wasn't just good enough for a weak autolyse?
At any rate, things turned out pretty good today with the exception that the dough could have relaxed a bit more as you'll see in the pics below. Here's the timeline:
0m Six loaves in the oven at 550F°, 95g water in the mini cast iron cooker. I also completely forgot to spray the loaves with water like I normally do. I ended up spraying extra water into the chamber because of this. I guess this is a natural expiment.
5m More spray for steam and turned the oven down to 500F°. I waited longer for the reduced temperature because the last couple of bakes had unsatisfactory spring.
13m Spin the loaves 180° and turned the oven down to 450F°. Looking good.
17m I turned oven off because everything looks pretty decent, but I don't trust that the inside is completely cooked and I don't want to burn everything.
20m Still looking good.
23m All loaves come out.
I have some more mystery flour which I might throw into the mixer this evening for tomorrow. We'll see.
I knew as soon as I woke up and saw it that the dough wasn't going to be ready in time for what my day allowed. It was a very nice day yesterday and I opened the doors and turned off the heat. I also neglected to turn the heat back on when the sun went down so the house was cooler than usual. I obviously need to build a proofing chamber now. And for the bakes, well they'd just have to be under proofed.
But I did plan on doing something different this time. I wanted to bake two batches of four loaves, eight in total, each at 600g. What could I learn from that?
Well, first off, the oven was too hot at 550°F for just four loaves of that size. The first batch cooked way too fast even after lowering the temp to 510°F once the loaves were in. And the second batch I dropped down to 490°F for the whole bake, which seemed to help a bit. The lesson learned here was that if I'm going to have the oven that high I need to have more dough in there to soak up all the heat.
Here's the timeline:
Bake One
0m Four loaves in and water added to little pot. Temp dropped to 510°F.
6m There doesn't seem to be enough steam in there and I can tell the dough is hardening, so I gave a couple of loaves a second score.
11m Time to spin the loaves 180°.
16m Things are not looking good. The spring is super weird and characteristic of it being under fermented.
18m Three loaves out.
19m All out. This bake was too quick and I'm worried about the insides.
Bake Two
0m Four loaves in and water added to little pot. The oven was set to 490°F and stayed there.
11:30m Spin the loaves 180°.
19m Take a couple out.
20m All out.
Seeds and nuts and stuff. But I won't get to taste it because it all goes to friends tonight.
For about the last 7 years the Napoli slap method has been my go to for quick and consistent opening of bases. It takes a while to get the hang of it but it's definitely worth the effort.
I've never been able to use this method. I probably need to actually practice it though.
A bakery that lives in harmony with nature.
Almost no electricity is used, and the bread dough is hand-kneaded and allowed to ferment naturally.
And the bread is baked in a homemade wood-fired oven.
Koki Ota, a baker, travels to France to learn the way of life of a "Paysin Boulanger" (a farmer's bakery).
He returned to Japan and now runs a one-of-a-kind bakery with his wife in an old folk house deep in the mountains.
There's a whole series of Japanese bakery tour videos up on YouTube. Try not to get sucked in.
Just this week I discovered the incredible YouTube and TikTok videos of Sage the Bad Naturalist. Sage is a hilarious and anything-but-bad naturalist, sharing concise, rapid-fire explainers of all sorts of natural phenomena. The above video uses sourdough bread to help illustrate how geodes form.
Bread only takes up around 10 seconds this video, but you should watch it anyway because it's great.
Maurizio Leo has also recently collaborated with Brod & Taylor on a new product — The Brod & Taylor Baking Shell.
It's a cover that you put over your bread while it's baking to keep in the steam, which helps bread expand. It's basically an upside down pot with a handle on the front:
With the Baking Shell, you get the same results as traditional pre-heated and heavy cast iron vessels, without the stress of lugging around a searing hot and heavy pot.
It's a nice design, but they claim it's patent pending? People have been using this technique for decades, maybe even centuries. I'm not sure what there is to patent here.
Also Gozney and Business & Pleasure Co are teaming up to for a Gozney Arc XL and 2k gift card giveaway. I'm pretty sure this is one of those schemes where you'll be unsubscribing from 3rd party emails over the next 10 years, so maybe use a throwaway email address.
A post written a day late is better than nothing. Especially when it seems to validate my theory.
This bake was a success. I got similar results to the awesome results the other day, making sure that my oven didn't stop heating (instead of reducing the heat like it's supposed to). The trick, and what I've used in the past but neglected to do on the previous bake, is to turn the oven off and then back on again. I really want a dumb oven that'll just do what I tell it to do, but ovens are expensive so I'm sticking with this one till it breaks.
I had originally planned to skip a couple of days of baking, but at about 8pm the night before I though I'd give it a try anyway. I made sure to increase the amount of starter to help with the rise and even though the bulk raise wasn't as much as I'd have liked it was good enough. I also reduced the size of the loaves to 600g because I got a set of smaller of bread bannetons that I wanted to use.
I like them. I like smaller loaves. I get to bake more things this way.
The baker's percentages are here and I present the timeline below. This bake was super simple with the current setup which I kept the same.
0m Six 600g loaves go in the oven with good scores in them. Boiling water added to the little pot and then oven turned down to 510°F.
8m The Spring is looking good.
12m Spin the loaves around 180°.
21m Four of the laoves come out.
22m The last two loaves come out.
Random sidenote: I'm trying out JPEG XL for these images.
I'm still feeling really good about yesterday's bake.
But I'm upset at today's bake.
Everything was great until I turned down the oven from 550°F to 510°F. There's been times in the past when I turn down the heat with my (Wolf) oven and it says "OK, so you wanted it off then…" which is not what I wanted. But that's what happened today as far as I can tell. There was some initial spring from the loaves and then things went a bit flat. Maybe the dough was almost too over-proofed, but I really think things could have been better had the temp been where it was supposed to be.
-2h18m Turned on the oven to 550°F. It takes a really long time to heat up with the firebricks in there.
0m Six loaves, boiling water into the mini cast iron container and placed on its lid. Turned the heat down to 510°F from 550°F. Did I put too much water in the cast iron?
8:30m Took lid off the little water pot. There's a bit of spring but not what I was expecting.
15m Spun the loaves around. Heat in the oven is way off. I think the burners weren’t turning on - the laser thermometer says 340°F on the bottom‽ And the loaves are not browning nearly fast enough. I think the oven fucked up.
15:30m Turned the oven up to 540°F and now they are browning. Ugh dumb oven.
21m All the loaves come out.
It's raining today, so no outdoor shots.
Sourdough, why are you breaking my heart? (Really it's the oven. I suppose I should do some research on this problem someday).
Well for one, I lowered the hydration by three points to 70%, and I also brought down the starter percentage to 8%. I also didn't over ferment the loaves this time, thankfully. I changed the salt, but I don't think that actually made a difference (though maybe I'll play around with that in the future).
I also made changes to the oven layout. I added two more fire bricks to the floor bringing the total up to four. I also have a mini cast iron dutch oven made by Lodge that I put on the floor of the oven. I dumped a bunch of boiling water in it and put the lid on right after the loaves were inserted into the oven. The theory being that it would constantly release a little bit of steam throughout the bake. I didn't measure it, but I'll have to in the future.
One drawback from from adding extra firebricks was it increased the heat up time by about 30 minutes. But it's worth it because I think they really help stabalize the heat in the oven.
And finally I pulled out a new utility blade to score the bread. The cuts went much deeper this time and just really flowed through the dough. I wonder how much of my previous problems were because of a dull blade?
Here's the timeline
0m Six loaves, boiling water into the mini cast iron dutch oven which I then covered with it's lid. Turned the heat down to 520°F from 550°F.
5m I added a little bit more steam via spray, which I decided was dumb because there was still water in the mini cast iron. I should have just kept the oven closed.
7m I'm seeing some good spring. Was it was the dough or good scoring? Or both?
13m Spun the loaves 180° (oh my these look good already).
16m Turned the oven down to 500°F because I was worried they were baking too quick.
19.5m Four loaves come out of the oven
20.5m The last two came out. I pulled off the lid from the mini cast iron and there was still a little bit of water in there. I could add a little less next time.
Right before sunflower seed butter was added
I'm doing another bake tomorrow, but with rosemary. I'll be using the exact same dough percentages and I don't think I'll change anything about my setup. If I can reproduce these results I'll be super happy.
I had notes on these bakes, but I just upgraded to MacOS Sequoia 15.1 b5, and somehow opening Notes on my Mac erased what I had on my iPhone. For two bakes! Wonderful. I wonder what else was deleted.
I raised the shelves in oven and added two firebricks on the floor in the hopes to maintain heat. I needed to raise the shelves to make room for the bricks. (I had firebricks lying around because I had plans to make an WFO in my yard someday. I never got around to it though).
I used boiling water instead of ice cubes and regular spray in the oven, and I only did this twice. Once at minute 0, and once at minute 5.
I turned the heat down from 550°F to 510°F once the loaves were inserted.
So how were they? Pretty good! Much better than last time:
October 4th:
I'm kind of getting sick of bread at this point. But I'm driven to make the same kind of bakes as I would when using a cast iron combo cooker. Is it possible? Maybe not. But I still want to get as close as possible.
I went too far on the starter though, or maybe I didn't bake the loaves soon enough. They ended up being over-proofed, which made them flatter than I'd like. I think I'll drop down to 8% to see what happens next time. Maybe I'll also just bake them sooner.
Six loaves all in at once. 550°F down to 510°F after 8 minutes or so because I forgot to do it right away.
Still using firebricks and boiling water for steam.
The baking smell was certainly more sour, and so much so it honestly creeped me out a little bit. But the end result tasted fine.
What exactly is happening to all this bread? Well the October 3rd batch went to neighbors who were super happy to have some bread. The October 4th batch went to the climbing gym with me. Except for one loaf which I threw out my car window at striking Boeing Machinists. (I did ask if they wanted a loaf first. And they did!).
At this point, I've baked somewhere between 40 and 50 loaves in a little over a week. So I'm taking the weekend off.
Starting temp was 550°F with the convection fan on. I turned it down to 510°F as soon as the dough was put in the oven. The idea being that there would be enough heat to jump start everything and then turning the oven down would keep the outside of the dough from hardening up so quick.
I'm also wondering, maybe I should try using boiling water instead of ice cubes? Ice cubes are great when they are used in a cast iron combo cooker, but maybe not in a larger oven?
Another thing to maybe try is to put some fire bricks on the floor of the oven? Maybe they would help soak up and then radiate heat so the temp wouldn't drop so much when steam is added?
At any rate, here's the timeline and results.
0m Six loaves, five ice cubes, and a bit of water sprayed to make some steam.
5m Another bit of spraying.
8m The loaves are springing up a bit and little ears are forming.
12m Spun the loaves around 180°
17m I just realized I haven't tempted the stones with the laser thermometer, so let's do that — 410°F on the bottom, 400°F on the top.
20m Two loaves look done so out they come.
22m Three more loaves are ejected.
24m The final loaf is taken out.
I used a lame this time when scoring the bread, which I usually don't do. Normally I'll use a ceramic utiltiy blade but I thought maybe I should use the official tools since my scoring was super bad last time.
Action shot with an annoying shadow. This is why I normally take bread picks out of direct sun. But the light makes it look so good…
These had a bit of everything bagel seasoning thrown in, with some extra onion powder. They were tasty, but maybe I'll skip the extra onion powder next time.
I have another batch of doing that's raising overnight and this time I'm taking out the whole grain flour.
Was my scoring of the dough too shallow, or was it the lower hydration that caused crappy spring? There's too many variables!
Starting temp, 515°F. Convection on.
0m: Six loaves, four ice cubes, and a spray of the oven.
5m: Spray the oven a bit with water. The top stone temp is at 450°F, bottom is at 425°F according to the laser. Internal thermometer says 460°F.
9m: A little bit of spring in the loaves, hurray.
12m: I spin the loaves, this time with gloves on.
15m: Move a couple of loaves around that are browning more than others. Additional spray. The laser thermometer says 377°F on the top stone and 350°F on the bottom (which seems low).
22m: All loaves come out.
I really disappointed with the ears on these loaves. Did I cut them too shallow? Or did the lower hydration cause things to stiffen up on the crust so the expansion couldn't take place?
Hero shot in the sun, with a detail of the crust
At least I know 10-20 folks who will gobble this stuff up regardless.
I'll take a day off baking I think, and then maybe… raise the hydration a little bit. I went 70% and that might have been a little low.
It was colder last night, and the heat wasn’t on. It wasn’t until I started dividing up the dough that I realized it hadn't fermented as much as usual overnight. I guess that's fine. I'll just have to do an extended raise while they're balled up.
I also realized yesterday when mixing the dough that I had ben hydrating it a bit too much. The flour I usually use (Cairnspring Mills) will take more water than Shepherd's Grain and I hadn't adjusted my formula for it. So the next bake after this one will drop the hydration down to 70% (from 77%). Here’s a link to the recipe.
Also I decided instead of going up 25°F each time, that I'd instead jump directly to the high end of 550°F. I could then treat finding the optimal temp like a binary search, which I'm allowed to do because I'm a programmer.
The oven was preheated to 550°F. Convection on (it was not for yesterday's bake).
0m: 6 loves in with 4 ice cubes on the floor and a little spray.
2m:: Internal thermometer says 500°F.
5m: Sprayed again, already bread is browning on bottom left loaf. Lowering temp to 510°F, internal thermostat says 450°F.
8m: Spring is looking good.
10m: Spun the loaves 180° and sprayed one more time. Side note: wear gloves next time when spinning because burning yourself isn't fun.
12:30m: Internal thermometer says 500°F. Laser thermometer says 350°F on the bottom stones and 400°F for the top.
15m: Swapped top loaves for bottom
19m: Top right and bottom left loaves look done, so out they go.
22m: Took the remaining loaves out.
58m: The oven is back to temp (though the laser it's a little bellow on the stones).
I think 550°F is too high, and I'll be starting at 510°F for the next batch.
I recently bought a new dough mixer (I'll talk about it in another post), and it’s awesome because I can now make way more dough at once without burning out the motor. But I still can't bake as much at once — or can I?
What follows are my notes as I attempt to find the optimal setup for my oven to bake at least six loaves of bread in one go. I'll start with a lower temp than I usually use (450°F) and then work my way up to 550°F (in 25-degree increments). I usually bake at 495°F in a cast iron combo cooker, which seals in the steam for the first part of the bake. What I’m trying now is quite different, so I expect some subpar bread (at least at first).
My setup for today includes two rows of 1/2" thick stones, each 6" × 6", giving me a total of 8 baking stones on each rack. The number of stones isn’t super important, but covering each rack from side to side is. I also have a cast iron pan on the bottom of the oven, which I’ll throw ice cubes into when I start baking.
I’m baking six regular sourdough loaves, each 700g. I’m using Shepherd’s Grain High Gluten (aka "Opus") flour. It’s good flour, it’s cheap, and I expect to go through a lot of loaves during these tests.
The oven was preheated to 450°F.
0m: The loaves, four ice cubes onto the cast iron, and a bit of sprayed water entered the oven.
5m: I sprayed a bit more water onto the oven floor to create steam for expansion.
11m: I used my laser thermometer on the stones and measured them at 350°F and 380°F. I expected a drop in temp, but not this much.
12m: The oven spring on the loaves looks mostly good.
15m: It’s starting to smell like bread in the kitchen.
18m: The stones are still at a low temperature (around 350°F), but the cast iron on the floor is at 450°F. The top-right loaves are cooking faster, so I spun them 180°.
22m: I swapped the top loaves with the bottom, as the top was cooking faster. The stones are still well below 450°F. I sprayed a little more water (probably not helping the temp, not sure why I'm still spraying at this point).
30m: The loaves are still not done, as they need more browning.
36m: I took one loaf out. The top stone is 300°F, and the bottom is 350°F.
41m: I removed all the loaves. One was very burnt on the bottom, but the rest look reasonable. I’m going to keep the oven on to see how long it takes to get back to 450°F.
58m: The oven is back to 450°F, and the stones are reasonably close to that temp as well.
Results
Some loaves were burnt on the bottom (I suspect they were on the top-right of the oven), and the oven spring wasn’t exactly what I was hoping for, though some turned out nicely.
It also took forever to bake, which was a problem. I think the steam and the mass of the loaves made the temperature drop by over 100°F. I’m tempted to jump right to 500°F for my next bake.
I love that Vincent has put so much custom work (even woodworking!) into his restaurant. I'm jealous. He also goes quite a bit into his dough management, with lots of great advice. It's worth watching.
While Vincent doesn't use Gozney ovens in his shop, he does do an amazing job of cooking a 16" pizza in an Arc at the end of the profile. That's wild.
But that's not the craziest thing. What gets me the most is the insane way Vincent shapes his dough at 4:19. I've never seen a technique like this before.
Here's some random pizza related links I've gathered for you.
First up, I've updated my dough calculator to take up to three different flours now, instead of just two. I've also tweaked the layout a bit, but it's still 100% mobile friendly and meant to be used from your pocket computer. And it still has the a great "share this recipie" links so you can pass along your dough creation to friends and family. I'm of course looking for new ideas if you have any.
Next up, Gozney has parnered with Hedley & Bennett and created new limited colors for their Arc ovens. I really really want one. I just don't know where I'd put it.
A couple of King Arthur blog posts I found interesting:
KA Baking: A new way to use your old scale. While it's obvious the tare function could be used this way, why hadn't I thought of this already?
KA Baking: Does sourdough starter get better with age?. Spoiler alert (and something I've been telling friends for years): age doesn't matter. And the most important takeaway from this article is "Once you feed and maintain it in your own home, it will eventually adapt to your own region and climate, becoming uniquely yours".
Tucked away in the fertile Skagit Valley of Washington state, something special has been growing for over a decade. There, Dr. Stephen Jones has led the Breadlab at Washington State University, pioneering grain innovation and bringing better bread to all.
Over the years, King Arthur has worked closely with Jones and the Breadlab — from sponsoring grain-centered gatherings to developing an innovative new flour. Now, with Jones retiring, we’re sharing the history of our partnership and all the milestones (and bread!) along the way. "His impact is so vast, reaching so many of us in the baking and food world," says Mel Darbyshire, Head Baker at Grand Central Bakery in the Pacific Northwest.
I was lucky enough to meet Jones for a moment last year at the Breadlab. Even though he's retiring, I hope he stays involved somehow with the local grain community. He's done great work and seemes to be a genuinely kind person.
Olive oil base, thin slices of orange, red onion, & black pepper.
This pizza combo was very good. What made it even more interesting was how the dough turned out.
I've got a lot of flour right now and I'm trying to use up the last of my Shepherd's Grain 00. I've also got a ton of Cairnspring Sequoia so I did a 50/50 blend of those two for this bake. These are flours I've never used together, and I also pushed up the size of each dough ball to 300 grams. The full recipe is available on my dough calculator.
At any rate, it's my standard sourdough formula, with the hydration down just a little bit because of the warm weather. I made it the day before and let it raise overnight at room temp, then broke it up into individual balls (x6) the next morning and let it raise again for about 8 hours.
I got my Dome nice and hot to about 950°, threw the pizza in, and immediately turned down the temp. While 45-60 second bakes can be really fun, I wanted something a bit more controlled and drier than you'd get from a super quick bake. The pizza still cooked in about 2 minutes (I'm guessing here).
I'm still thinking of this pizza the next day, and I'm certainly going to use this flour combo again. And when I'm out of the SG00 I'll try using Cairnspring's Trailblazer, which I also have a ton of.
The Mozeralla is also local and came from just a bit north of where I live; the folks at Ferndale Farmstead make some great stuff.
A little bit of Pizza / Mac company crossover synergy - the folks at Panic who make the (adorable hand held yellow game console) Playdate have come out with a neat new magnetic cover for it, which turns it into a little pizza box: Playdate Pizza Cover.
And if I have my Panic history right, isn't this the same pizza chef that they tried to get on their company checkbooks at one time?
It's been rather warm up here in the PNW and I've been blowing out my dough quite a bit recently (aka, over fermenting). Which sucks. It's no good. Very bad. The dough is impossible to handle and the pizza rips easily.
So for the heck of it, I dropped my usual hydration (70%) down to 62%. I was curious how it would turn out. Here's the full recipe (where I'm also playing around with the flours used by The Carlson Block).
How did it play out? Well, kneading it was a bit like working with Play Doh. 62% might seem like a good amount still, but the flour I use generally calls for more water. So with most other flours this would feel like 57%.
But did it blow out? Nope. Not even close, which was nice. Lowering the hydration that much was a bit drastic though, and I think for my next bake I'm going to bump it up to 66% and see how that goes.
I've been following Peddling Pizza for years because it's something I've been dreaming about doing for a long, long time (it'll never happen - but it's fun to dream). It was interesting to learn exactly how Adam bootstrapped everything to get to where he is now.
This vid came up as a suggested video, and it's pretty good! Are you dough balling skills lacking? Is your dough tearing or lumpy? You should watch this video.
Gozney is having a "Summer Sales Event", where you can save $200 on a Dome, $150 off a Dome S1, and $100 off a Roccbox. I goes from May 14th - 28th.
I don't get a kickback or anything for mentioning this, I just think Gozney makes great pizza ovens.
(Wait! I do get a kickback if you purchase a Roccbox from Amazon. So there is that, and it's at the discounted price as well.)
And then over on YouTube, Gozney has been putting out a series called "How To Pizza". They are up to three episodes at this point, and it's part of their GozneyTV playlist. They also have a short trailer up for it.
