Definition of Perfection

"Define your own success" is some of the best advice I've received.  I define my baking success several ways, but obtaining the optimal crust is high on my list.

The challenge is simple - how to get the most caramelization on the top without burning the bottom.

 These baguettes I've cranked the bake time (at 525 F) from 35 to 40 minutes.

 You can see the bottom here (seam is always down) - no char.

 For my boule I cranked the time from 45 minutes to 65.

As you can see the bottoms are perfect, thanks to a nice layer of fine cornmeal (and parchment paper) in the bottom of the dutch oven.

A few good articles to read (thanks Rob!):

Could This Baker Solve the Gluten Mystery?

The Wheat Lowdown

And of-course the original no-knead article from 2006 that started the entire trend: Recipe: No-Knead Bread

Enjoy some bread!

   -Matt

Anyone can bake!

So in the 2007 Disney movie Ratatouille the fictional Chef Gusteau has a famous motto, "Anyone can cook."

I agree with the sentiment but I would phrase it as "Anyone can bake" - This is a photograph of a friend of mine's first loaf.  Amazing :)

  Enjoy some bread,

    -Matt

Baguettes from Shaping through Baking

Formed loaves

 Scored

 Baked - 38 min @ 525 degrees Fahrenheit

Sometimes I find a progression of photos tell an entire story with many words. :)

Enjoy some bread.

      -Matt

There are plenty of references out there talking about baking good bread.  After years and years of experimenting I am still working on solving all of the little mysteries I run across.

Normally my large loaves bake for about 45-48 minutes at 525 degrees.  This past week I went to 72 minutes with great results. Curious :)

Enjoy some good bread, you will be glad you did.

  -Matt

Marking loaves

So I bake anywhere from 3 to 9 loaves each weekend, but those loaves from come three batches of dough.  Each batch I carefully change one variable to then determine which change was most advantageous.

A small trick I use to figure out which batch is which is to mark the bread (as shown here).

See more of my bread here:  http://goo.gl/EGJ0iL

Enjoy your bread,
    -Matt

Wild Yeasts

I've spent the last month experimenting with several variants of local sourdough yeasts that I've been able to culture.  I'm running them through a series of A/B experiments to see which have the best taste and crumb properties.

Since Posterous shut-down I'm also trying to find a easy way to post my photos.  You can always request to follow me on twitter.

Mineral Water vs Distilled Water

So this past weekend I ran a experiment that for whatever reason hadn't occurred to me before. I mixed one batch with my normal mineral water mix (I like Pellegrino) and another batch with just distilled water. You can see the results above - the mineral water loaf is on the left and the distilled water loaf is on the right.

What you can't see is that the distilled water loaf took 150g additional flour to get to the right consistency, which really surprised me. I'm going to try this experiment again this weekend to see if it was a fluke (or a mis-measure) or if there really might be something to this.

You may have noticed all my photos are gone. This is because the site I had been using for for the past 3 years (http://www.posterous.com/) has shut-down and now they've cleared out their image cache. I have all of the original images, I just need to re-upload and manually fix them (which is going to take a while).

If you are interested you can follow me on Twitter for weekly photos :)

      Cheers
       - Matt the Weekend Baker