[Sca-cooks] Getting bread into the oven
David Friedman
ddfr at daviddfriedman.com
Sat Jan 15 10:47:42 PST 2011
I've been experimenting with the baking technique in _Artisan Bread
in Five Minutes a Day_, recommended to me Vis and Mara. The basic
idea is that you make a large amount of a rather wet dough, let it
rise about two hours, then refrigerate it. When you want bread, you
pull off a chunk, shape it, let it sit for half an hour or so, and
bake it. So far it seems to work--my first experiment used their
technique on my standard sourdough bread, something they don't have.
I have a batch of rye in the refrigerator at the moment.
One thing that struck me about their instructions and some others is
that they let the dough rise on a bread peel, a paddle shaped board,
with corn flour under the dough to keep it from sticking, then slide
the dough from that into the oven, often onto a hot baking stone. I'm
not sure what the point of that somewhat elaborate procedure is. Why
not have the dough rising on a cookie sheet or equivalent, something
that can go into the oven, then put it in? If you are using a baking
stone, you presumably don't get the full effect, since the cookie
sheet is between the stone and the bread--but a cookie sheet is metal
and thin, so I wouldn't expect it to make much difference.
Can anyone more familiar with bread baking explain?
--
David/Cariadoc
www.daviddfriedman.com
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