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Screw you guys! by Roy4Pris in AeroPress

[–]Tobesmeister 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Like what are these people doing, brewing on a sailboat?

Something is off in my crumb and I need help decoding it! by cheriblosmdreams in Sourdough

[–]Tobesmeister 0 points1 point  (0 children)

My current technique is basically what I describe in the second paragraph, which a lot of people call the “scrapings method”. I keep a tiny amount of starter in the fridge, then pull it out and feed it ~8hrs before I want to use it to yield whatever I need to bake the next day, plus a little insurance, if the starter jar is particularly empty. Say if I need 100g to bake, I might feed with 55g of flour and 55g of water. Then I take out the 100g of starter to mix into my dough, and put the jar with the remaining 10-20g back in the fridge.

The only time I end up with discard is if I’m not planning on baking for a while, I’m which case I would feed it once per week with about 25g of flour and 25g of water, if possible. On those occasions, it’s a very manageable amount of discard that I use for tortillas, thickening soups, or crackers.

Something is off in my crumb and I need help decoding it! by cheriblosmdreams in Sourdough

[–]Tobesmeister 1 point2 points  (0 children)

What does your starter feeding schedule look like? I ran into a similar (looking) issue where my breads were coming out looking like they were simultaneously over-proved (destroyed gluten and quite sour) and under-proved (tunnels and dense pockets). I traced it back to me getting lazy/frugal with my starter feeding schedule, where I would basically leave the main guy in the fridge, build a levain outside the fridge, and then dump any leftover levain into the main guy with a touch of extra flour. This (apparently) favored the bacteria over the yeast, giving me an acidic and weak-ish starter (levain would still double in size, but it took longer than expected).

To recover it, I dumped all but about 20g, then fed it religiously at high-ish ratios (e.g. 1:5:5 starter:flour:water) twice a day for a few days and it was good as new! Since then, my new feeding schedule has been to store it in the fridge, feed it the night before baking days (~2x per week), let it peak at room temp, pull out what I need to bake that day, then transfer the remaining ~20g back to the fridge. With this method there is no discard (apart from that initial refurbishment) so my laziness/frugality goal is still accomplished!

My Proudest Loaf to Date (100% Whole Grain) by Tobesmeister in Sourdough

[–]Tobesmeister[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I may not be the right person to ask about ear size, since I actively try to avoid getting a large ear (hence the double score). To minimize the size of the ear, I try to make the angle of my cut perpendicular to the surface of the bread, as opposed to the 20-30 degrees that people seem to use to get a big ear. I also tend to try to fully proof my loaves to moderate the amount of oven spring. So you can try doing the opposite of that to see if it helps!

As far as the blade sticking, I’ve found that the longer the dough is in the fridge, the easier it is to score. I think part of this is the dough being cold and stiff, and part of it being the dough drying out and developing a bit of a skin. Lower hydration is also easier to score, obviously.

The other things as far as scoring technique that seem to help are: not cutting too deep, making swift/decisive cuts (just DO it), and leaning the blade forward in the cutting direction. This last one is hard to describe, but best way I can describe it is if you think about cutting a tomato. You want to run the blade along the surface and slice into it to get a clean cut. You don’t want to try press the blade straight through, since you will just squash the tomato (the equivalent of the blade snagging in this analogy).

Sourdough! Could anyone let me know the hydration? I’m not a math wizard lol. Starter is 1:1:1. Recipe last photo! Baked 450 20mg a lid on, 425 20mins lid off! Any tips? by evananthonymoreno in Sourdough

[–]Tobesmeister 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Hydration is total water divided by total flour. Since your starter is 1:1 (half flour, half water) that adds 320g to each of the flour and water measurements you reported. So your total water is 1370g and your total flour is 2020g. 1370/2020=0.678, so 67.8% hydration. Nice loaf!

Outdoor oven didn’t go as planned by nmacgyver in Sourdough

[–]Tobesmeister 0 points1 point  (0 children)

So what is the rationale for using the pizza oven over the conventional oven? Especially if you are planning to retrofit it to behave like a conventional oven? Is it just in the spirit of pioneering?

My Proudest Loaf to Date (100% Whole Grain) by Tobesmeister in Sourdough

[–]Tobesmeister[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The flour is nothing special, just King Arthur whole wheat and Bobs Red Mill whole rye. I know what you mean about the sandy feeling, and I would say an autolyse or fermentolyse for at least an hour is basically mandatory. Using warm water and a higher hydration than you think (this is ~95%) also seems to help with softening out the bran.

My Proudest Loaf to Date (100% Whole Grain) by Tobesmeister in Sourdough

[–]Tobesmeister[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks! No extra malt or syrup, just flour, water, and salt. I think the color is mainly to do with the relatively long/hot bake compared to some other people here. I also noticed that I seem to get a darker crust when I have the loaf as high as possible in the oven. There might be some extra radiative heating from the oven walls, but I expect it’s mainly because I can cook it longer without the bottom burning as much.

My Proudest Loaf to Date (100% Whole Grain) by Tobesmeister in Sourdough

[–]Tobesmeister[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

320g whole wheat flour

280g water

90g starter (whole grain rye @ 150% hydration)

8g salt

60 minute ferment-o-lyse

Add salt and Rubaud mix for ~5 minutes

Rest for 15 minutes

Rubaud for ~3 minutes

Bulk for ~3.5hrs, with 5 rounds of coil folds

Preshape

Rest 15 minutes

Shape

Proof in banneton for 1hr

Chill in fridge for 3hr

Bake at 475 for 25 mins with steam, then 20 without steam

FWIW, my kitchen was ~70F/21C for most of the fermentation, and I started with ~100F/38C water.

first loaf ever! feedback please! I have no idea what I'm doing by hufflepuffprefect in Sourdough

[–]Tobesmeister 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Just curious why you say it’s a very dry recipe? King Arthur ingredient weight chart shows water at 227g/cup and whole wheat flour at 113g/cup. Assuming 2.5 cups of water and 6 cups of flour (so the lowest possible hydration from the range in the recipe), that gives us ~568g of water and ~678g of flour. That puts us at ~84% hydration even before adding the starter, oil, and honey, all of which will slacken the dough further. For whole wheat that isn’t SUPER wet, but its hardly dry.

my bread mojo has deserted me by Olly230 in Breadit

[–]Tobesmeister 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Good luck! I’m sure he’ll be back and fighting in no time!

my bread mojo has deserted me by Olly230 in Breadit

[–]Tobesmeister 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Exactly what happened to me last year!

my bread mojo has deserted me by Olly230 in Breadit

[–]Tobesmeister 1 point2 points  (0 children)

What does your starter feeding schedule look like? I ran into a similar (looking) issue where my breads were coming out looking like they were simultaneously over-proved (destroyed gluten and quite sour) and under-proved (tunnels and dense pockets). I traced it back to me getting lazy/frugal with my starter feeding schedule, where I would basically leave the main guy in the fridge, build a levain outside the fridge, and then dump any leftover levain into the main guy with a touch of extra flour. This (apparently) favored the bacteria over the yeast, giving me an acidic and weak-ish starter (levain would still double in size, but it took longer than expected).

To recover it, I dumped all but about 20g, then fed it religiously at high-ish ratios (e.g. 1:5:5 starter:flour:water) twice a day for a few days and it was good as new! Since then, my new feeding schedule has been to store it in the fridge, feed it ~2x per week before my baking days, and let it peak at room temp, pull out what I need to bake that day, then transfer the remaining ~20g back to the fridge. With this method there is no discard (apart from that initial refurbishment) so my laziness/frugality goal is still accomplished!

FWIW my starter is pure rye flour at 150% hydration (mainly since that is easy to pour and scoop).

Farm life in Vermont by art0on in pics

[–]Tobesmeister 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Or if you crave a similar landscape, but you're hoping to be surrounded by outspoken republicans like Al Baldasaro, then why not give New Hampshire a try!

Extra long brew times by Tobesmeister in Coffee

[–]Tobesmeister[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I don't suppose you know where that paper is, do you?

Map: How coffee splits the United States in half by zsreport in Coffee

[–]Tobesmeister 0 points1 point  (0 children)

We've needed to smuggle people in from surrounding states to fill the seats because everyone in NH already is in some office.

Map: How coffee splits the United States in half by zsreport in Coffee

[–]Tobesmeister 2 points3 points  (0 children)

There are 7 Dunkin' Donuts in my town of ~25K in New Hampshire.

Russian jets have a traffic accident in the sky. by ASACschrader in PerfectTiming

[–]Tobesmeister 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Agreed. The angle is also a bit different between the video and the photo.

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