Bread Adventure

Since I was a wee lad, I've liked baking bread. However, preparing bread is a time consuming process involving various rising and punching, and my travel-heavy lifestyle makes it difficult to practice. Plus, I've never really taken the time to study the various aspects of preparation that give bread different kinds of flavor. But due to some random good luck, I'm gonna be in town from today and over the weekend!

Before I get into various kinds of additives, I want to get a handle on the basic taste of unadulterated bread. So first, some research:

• Simple: http://www.bearcave.com/bookrev/bread_satori.htm
• Detailed: http://www.baking911.com/bread/101_intro.htm

I'm not a huge fan of sourdough, I greatly prefer the taste of sweet French rolls and baguettes. So, I'm going to investigate various yeast doughs, where fermentation seems to be the key difference. Being that I don't want to hunt down a lot of different kinds of yeast, I'm going to stick with the garden-variety powdered kind found easily in the supermarket and experiment with different fermentation methods. Meaning that out of the basic ingredients (flour, water, yeast, salt, kneading, time) I'm going to be mainly experimenting with time and keep the other variables constant.

According to that baking911 site, the basic yeast rising lifecycle for a bread is:

1. First rise (unshaped lump)
2. Shape into loaf
3. Second rise
4. Bake

If using instant powdered yeast, this can be reduced to:

1. Shape into loaf
2. Rise
3. Bake

A cold-rise can be added by allowing either the first or the second rise to occur in the refrigerator. If performing the first rise cold, the dough should return to room temperature before punching it down for the second rise. The duration of a rise varies, and is generally calibrated to whatever it takes for the volume to double.

I'm going to go with a basic French baguette recipe (convenient because it doesn't require loaf pans) and divide it into several smaller loaves with different rising procedures:

• Stock recipe:
  
• First rise: 4 hours (with a punchdown at 2 hour and 3 hour marks)
• Second rise: 40 minutes
• Long fermentation test
• First rise: 4 hours + overnight in refrigerator (punchdown at 2 hour mark and before refrigerating)
• Second rise: 40 minutes
• Short fermentation test
• Second rise: 1.5 hours

Need a warm place to rise, I'll either use a warm oven or maybe the network closet.

Stay tuned!