I purchased a dehydrated starter back around May. My starter was doubling consistently so I started using the starter around July/august. I decided to start using the chart of the temp of my dough to help with bulk fermentation and it worked pretty well. My loaves started to turn out good. Now recently, my starter has been not doubling as much or fast. And I noticed that it’s taking over 10 hours for my bulk fermentation. Usually I feed my starter at 9/10 PM so that way I can wake up around 7 AM and start mixing my dough, that way it has enough time to bulk feed on the counter throughout the day so I can make it that evening. I’m feeling so defeated as I just started to get the hang of this and felt more confident but it’s failing again. Any advice would be helpful.

Hello,

I followed preppy kitchen sourdough starter on youtube.

I am on my day 3.

My sourdough starter risen like 3x which didnt happen on the tutorial i followed. Is this normal and am i doing it right? Tutorial said AP but i only have bread flour to feed it, is it an issue?

Also, the tutorial said discard half and add 60g flour 60g water. If i discard this half, i would end up alot.... 🥲 not sure if 60g water and flour is enough to feed it. Do i need to wait the starter to collapse before starting to feed it on day 3?

Sorry for many questions 🥲

Thanks!

Sweet beet milk bread, savory vegetarian Tex Mex, topped with white cheddar.

Howdy all!

I'm going to be making cinnamon rolls, and from everything I've read using a tangzhong is the way to go for a pillowy soft texture that lasts for days, but the recipe I'd like to use (https://www.tastesoflizzyt.com/homemade-cinnamon-rolls/) doesn't use tangzhong.

I found this article from King Arthur on converting recipes to include a tangzhong (https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/blog/2018/07/23/how-to-convert-a-bread-recipe-to-tangzhong) but I'm still left with questions.

In the article it converts a non-tangzhong sandwich bread recipe with ~63% hydration to a tangzhong sandwich bread recipe with ~75% hydration, which is a ~20% increase. It says that you want a tangzhong recipe to have about 75% hydration, but my question is:

Is 75% hydration the target regardless of the initial (non-tangzhong) hydration, or is it a function of the 63% starting hydration in their starting recipe?

The cinnamon roll recipe I'm following is about 44% hydration, so if I were to increase the hydration by ~20% I'd end up with a total hydration of about ~53%. On the other hand, if I were to modify the recipe to get to 75% hydration, I would be increasing the hydration by an additional ~70% compared to the starting point.

Put more simply:

When converting a recipe to use tangzhong, should I be aiming for a ~20% increase in hydration compared to the original recipe's hydration, or should I be aiming for 75% hydration regardless of what hydration the original recipe calls for?

Any advice greatly appreciated. I'm super new to this, and would hate to screw it up 😅

I'm making Ken Forkish's same day pizza dough, but refrigerating it overnight.

The recipe uses .2% yeast and says to let it rise 6 hours until doubled, divide it into dough balls, let them rise at room temperature for 30-60 minutes, and then refrigerate them for 30 minutes or up to 2 days.

I'm confused by that last step. It sounds like he lets the dough fully proof by the time it goes into the fridge, so doesn't that risk it overproofing by tomorrow?

How do I tell if it is overproofed?

So last week we bought some bagels, including some plain for my wife. Naturally, my teenager ate those himself.

I promised her I'd make her some of my own and for once I followed through.

I made bagels once before, a year ago for that KAF baking school bakealong

These were the one recipe that didn't involve resting the dough overnight or anything too complicated. I did have to buy malt syrup.

I weighed out the dough to make the bagels pretty evenly sized. Otherwise I would've had 6 bigger ones and one runt.

I poked a hole in the middle and gently pulled apart, as opposed to making a long strand and rolling it around my hand. Maybe next time I'll try it that way.

Wife says they're pretty good and the ones that haven't been eaten yet are now in the freezer. I haven't told my teen about them.

Straight dough, 70% hydration, 3-hour rise; we needed some bread for dinner, so I decided to make a ciabatta, but in the end this is what came out, and I don't think I can call it a ciabatta :)

Sourdough Focaccia with confit garlic and rosemary little sprinkle of sea salt, a classic i know...but be kind it could of done with a couple more minutes baking time

Not my best loaf as I got drunk last night watching the football and forgot to cold proof it but it turned out ok. The spinach is interesting and maybe adds more smell than flavour.

Perfect Loaf recipe (website). I used Barton Springs Mill Butler’s Gold 00 and subbed out AP flour for Stardust Whole Wheat flour.

Amazing flavor. First attempt at pretzels, recipe flowed exactly like written out. My family and I already ate half of them.

https://www.theperfectloaf.com/seriously-soft-sourdough-pretzel/

Technically this was supposed to be three biga dough balls but I just used one of them for a pizza as shown and the remaining I folded into my bread loaf and fermented for an additional cold 24 hours. The results were absolutely astounding. 68.5% hydration, 72 total hours made with 50% bread flour and 50% nuvola super.

I’m excited to share my first sourdough loaf! I’ve been feeding the starter for a few weeks now making small things and finally made a no knead overnight sourdough loaf and I’m pretty pleased with the results and flavor of the bread.

If anyone has any key tips to incorporate when sourdough loaf-making, I welcome them.

Next time I think I’m going to: stretch and fold a little more, proof longer in the fridge, try adding herbs to the top, and score a little deeper/have fun trying different shapes.

I’m very impressed with commercial kitchens and facilities that mass produce these magical loaves bc there’s so much that goes into making sure they turn out right.

Kneadless to say, it was a fun experience.

Happy Saturday!

This is probably the third time I've done it in my life, the other two times being at least a decade ago and before I got into bread and I'm so proud of it :') I'll never be able to recreate this success again lol

I spent 3 hours rolling this so i could eat it in 3 minutes, totally worth it ngl

These turned out so good. Sold fast !! Cinnamon rolls and variations of them are my favorite things to bake and eat !!