[Sca-cooks] Bread Puzzles

[Terry Decker]

Right.  Assuming 58 lbs. of flour, 9 lbs. of bran and 6 oz. of salt with a 
total shaped dough weight of 84 lbs. 7.75 oz. make right at 17 lbs. of 
water.  That means the white bread is about 3.4:1 flour to water by weight. 
A little heavy by modern standards but lighter than the manchet recipes I've 
worked with.

My thoughts about rasfraichir come from experience.  Modern practice is not 
to let dough collapse.  It usually occurs when the yeast is too active. 
I've had it happen and recovered by adding flour to stiffen the dough. 
Letting the first rise collapse or come close to collapse when working with 
sourdough ensures the dough is thoroughly leavened.  By my reading (which 
may be shaky) the dough was assembled (water, flour, leaven) on the 25th of 
February and allowed to rise and (maybe) collapse (probably 8 to 12 hours). 
"Lendemain," "the next day," the 26th of February, the "paston," "dough 
roll," was refreshed with 3 lbs. 2 oz. (of flour).  The salt was then added. 
The prestir was recovered.  The dough was then divided, shaped and allowed 
to rise (about 2 hours) until the bakers declared it ready for the oven.

Bear



On 2/1/16 7:34 PM, Terry Decker wrote:
> Without a measure of the liquid in the dough, there is no way to use this 
> description as a recipe.
The description includes the weight of the dough before you put it into
the oven. Subtract the weight of the flour and leaven and salt and you
have the weight of the water.

Your reading of raifrescir is interesting. It would explain why you seem
to do this the day before you add the leaven to the flour.

-- 
David Friedman
www.daviddfriedman.com
http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/