Hi Eveline,
It is our experience that when you try to structure things you make things more complicated by doing so and you tend to keep score less and less. Writing things down in a notebook while kneading and baking is a ‘low threshold’ way to quickly write things down in a chronological way. Doing this in a spreadsheet or on your laptop with dirty dough fingers does not really work for us. What we do is not scribble too much in one and the same recipe, but give each try a new page in the notebook (PR version 1 , PR version 2 etc). And then, when the recipe is well worked out and we are satisfied, we do make a spreadsheet and use that as a reference, also for the amount of dough we want to make. We make a print of this sheet and occasionally scribble on it and now and then we adjust it and make a new print based on new insights.
Of course everybody needs to work out their own system, but hopefully the above is slightly helpful for you.

Enjoy the baking!

For those who need to see a professional baker using the finger poke (just after he blows his nose!), check out Bill Buford’s visit to Bob the Boulanger in Lyons (www.youtube.com/watch…2A-Wj4cG0A).

hi Michalis,
Have you seen our recipe for Tartine sourdough and the way we adapted it, including the hydration, to our European flour and home baking needs. We recalculated and adjusted the hydration level to be 70%.
See recipe here: www.weekendbakery.com/posts…yle-bread/
We work in different temperatures (see: www.weekendbakery.com/posts…mperature/) and we adjust to that too indeed, we also adjust with each new batch of flour we get, because there is a difference. So it is constant adapting and adjusting to get it right.

Greetings,

Marieke & Ed

I am straggling lately translating American bread recipes to European ones. It seems that the hydration is in general way-off. I would like to achieve tartine kind of crumb (extremely open), however I do not really believe that flours such as zandhaas molen tarwe T65 can handle hydration levels around 80% and give a nice puff. What is your experience with high hydration? How far can you push it? Do you have certain ambient temperatures and humidity levels you work with?

All best,

Hi there,
I am guessing you are not that happy with the result of the deep slashes, plus there is also the risk of burning yourself on the hot oven and loosing heat. If you forget to score all that will happen is the bread will tear / crack at its weakest points (if you score you make that automatically the weakest point). This will more often than not be at the side of the bread and not where you would want it. It will not look that great but otherwise the bread can still be very good. So my suggestion would be, whenever you forget, just leave it and there will always be a next time.

Happy baking weekend!

Marieke

Hi Anton,
Thank you very much for the addition, we will add it to the list.

Happy baking and a very happy and inspirational 2013,

Ed & Marieke

Hi Gary,
Our most used banneton, also for the pain Rustique is the 750 gram one.

Just wondered what you thought was the best-sized brotform to order for general use, such as
production of the Pain Rustique? I’m looking at the video trying to imagine which size they
probably are. Any similar sized ones here? www.bannetons.com/index…on=angebot

Thanks!
Gary

Thank you very much.
Great to hear these tips are being put to good use!
Hope to post some new tips soon.

Enjoy the baking with your class,

Marieke & Ed