After my epic fail this past Saturday, I knew that I had to make up for it. But though those loaves definitely turned out wonky, they still tasted really good, and the family didn’t complain, though they did have a good laugh about my mutant bread (shown below).

But as I shared in my previous post, I did understand what I had done wrong. So given that, I had to put those lessons to the test.

First of all, I made absolutely sure my baking stone was set to go, and I pre-heated it for well over an hour before I baked. I also made sure that my loaves were completely proofed before I even considered baking them.

For my baguettes, I used a different shaping technique than what I have been using because I felt that the original technique I learned didn’t create enough tension on the surface. So I watched this video featuring master baker Scott Megee from The Artisan Crust channel:

I tell you what! That technique is the S%&T! I love the stitching technique that Scott uses. I did that and it I felt that it really gave me a more even distribution of the dough through the loaf.

Pre-shaping is so important! So is the bench rest immediately after the pre-shape. I also realized that I didn’t bench rest either loaf for very long on Saturday’s fail. But this time I took a good 20 minutes to let the dough settle down before I did the final shape. That combined with the new shaping technique made both loaves come out perfect!

As for the boule, I couldn’t be happier. I was a little concerned at the start of the bake because I kind of misjudged placing the dough on my stone and I had to pull it out, then reposition and all that movement kind of collapsed the loaf. But luckily it didn’t affect the oven spring.

I feel redeemed! Both the baguettes and the boule fit my archetype of artisan bread. The crust on both kinds are crackly with good ears; especially on the baguettes!

Bread making to me is very much like playing golf. I could be playing like crap and getting super-angry while I duff or skull or hook or slice. Then I hit a perfect shot. The club strikes the ball right in the middle of the sweet spot. I feel no resistance or impact and the ball shoots off like a rocket, landing smack dab in the middle of the fairway. And with that one shot, all my anxiety and frustration just goes away. It’s redeeming!

While I’ve had some wonderful successes in my journey of artisan bread making, I’ve also had some massive fails. I want to be transparent because especially when I first started baking bread, though they tasted great, I wouldn’t exactly call them ideal. Luckily for me though, I haven’t produced any bricks or inedible loaves. But I have a certain aesthetic of what my bread should look and taste like. And to be completely honest, I’ve only reached that ideal a few times.

Most have come pretty close to my ideal, and I’ve been relatively happy with the results. But some, like the loaves shown in the pictures above, have come out looking like mutant spores from another planet! I baked them just yesterday (at the time of this writing) to try out my new Fibrament-D baking stone. From what I can tell, a few things went wrong.

First, based on the cross-sectional cut, it appears that my baking stone wasn’t hot enough. I can tell that because the bottom half of the loaf has a much tighter crumb than the top. This means that the ambient temperature was much higher than the stone and it made the loaves spring much more on top. The dark almost burned top also indicates that there was a huge differential in heat between the ambient air and the stone. So next time, I will spend more time heating the stone.

Second, I used convection baking as opposed to heating from the bottom. This circulates the air evenly through the oven. But I think if I used just normal baking, the heat would’ve radiated from underneath the stone (there’s about 1″ of clearance on either side of the stone). That probably would have helped control the ambient temperature and relied more on the stone as the main heat conductor.

Finally, based on how both loaves exploded, I think my loaves were under-proofed. The fact that they exploded in such an uneven way is a sure sign that the loaves were under-proofed and the yeast had way too much energy left. So I need to let them proof for a bit longer. But I have to admit that it’s still tough for me to tell when the loaves are fully proofed because with the wildly varying temperature of my kitchen, I have to constantly monitor the loaves.

In light of that, I recently purchased a mini-fridge at an auction that I’m using as a dough retarder. I’ve baked a few loaves thus far using a long, overnight ferment, and the results have been promising. Chilled dough is also MUCH easier to score!

Just this one fail has taught me so many new things and it is really helping me appreciate everything that goes into the whole artisan bread-making process!

At the end of my Afternoon Batard recipe, I added a section on using whole wheat flour. I didn’t write it just to satisfy readers’ curiosity. For health and dietary reasons – and to be completely transparent, a strong suggestion from my doctor – I have had to start using whole wheat flour in my bread – at least 50% of my flour is whole wheat flour.

I have to admit that it has been a rather frustrating experience making the transition to whole wheat flour. Up to this point, I’ve invested hours – almost daily – in becoming proficient in making bread with white bread flour. And then having to make an abrupt turn; well, it wasn’t smooth and I really felt like I was going all the way back to square one. The transition is akin to a painter who has mastered watercolor moving to acrylic or oil painting. The basic principles of color and shading are similar, but the change in medium forces adjustments to the technique.

Luckily for me, bread making has become a bit of an obsession so I wasn’t going to be deterred from this setback. Also, just within a few tries of making a few different types of loaves, I started to get a feel for it. Here’s what I’ve learned thus far (and mind you I’m still learning but these things have gotten my bread back “normal”):

The grind of the wheat flour – no matter what kind you use – is critical. I started out using course-ground wheat flour. It tasted okay, but the texture was way too gritty, and the crumb was really, really closed, even if I used a 90%+ hydration and used a gluten helper such as vital wheat gluten or psyllium fiber. Fine or extra-fine grind is the best.

As for the type of wheat flour, I absolutely love working with white whole wheat flour. It tastes much sweeter than red whole wheat. I’ve only made one batch using this flour, but I’m hooked! The taste and texture of the bread instantly hooked me! The loaves I just made used absolutely zero added sugar (which many whole wheat recipes include). The white whole wheat has a sweetness to it that doesn’t need fortification.

With any wheat flour dough, everything takes longer or you do things more. You have to do the initial knead longer. The amount of folding doubles at the very least (this first batch, I folded it 6 times before I got the right tension in the dough). Fermentation takes longer as well – at least a 3-4 hour bulk at room temperature, though I got better results with a slow, overnight fermentation (I baked half my dough the first day, then baked the second loaf the next morning).

I found that even more so than with white flour, shaping a loaf and creating surface tension with whole wheat dough is even more critical. Furthermore, final proofing takes quite a bit longer. Even with my early attempts, I didn’t proof my loaves long enough and they sprung up way too fast! You want oven spring, but you want it to be slow and gradual.

For instance, this morning, I shaped and proofed my second loaf fresh out of the refrigerator. When I’ve done a slow ferment with white bread, after an hour and half, the dough would be ready. But with this whole wheat loaf? After an hour and a half, it still needs another half hour to proof – at least (I’m proofing it while I write this). Even my loaf yesterday (shown above) – I barely proofed it enough. After it was finished baking, I realized I probably should’ve proofed it longer.

So as I said in my afternoon batard recipe, going to whole wheat makes the process at the very least, an all day affair. But to be realistic, it’s better as a two-day affair. Mind you, those days don’t have to be consecutive. The thing about cold fermentation is that you can let it go for a few days. Given that, my process will be mixing and doing the initial knead the first day, then putting the dough in the fridge for at least 18-24 hours. So I’ll mix in the morning the first day, and when I want to make a loaf, I’ll grab a piece out of the fridge then shape, proof and bake on the next.

I know, that’s a no-shit-Sherlock statement. Obviously, you can’t make bread without it. But there’s more to that statement than just the ingredient itself.

For dietary concerns, I’ve recently started incorporating more whole grain into my dough and I’m really looking to eventually move entirely to whole grain bread. I’ve made some loaves with nominal success with varying blends of bread and whole wheat flour. I’m blending mainly because of the crumb. 100% whole wheat dough, unless it’s worked for a long time or up above 90% hydration, just doesn’t rise that much – even with helpers like vital wheat gluten or psyllium fiber. Those provide a little help with oven spring and rising, but you just won’t get that wide crumb.

Enter white whole wheat flour.

From what I’ve been able to gather in my research, white whole wheat flour will get me that wide crumb. Granted, I still have to ferment it a long time and work it more than regular bread flour, but it apparently works great. Furthermore, by law, whole grain flour cannot have any GMOs in it and that’s a big concern for me and actually, a big reason why I’m moving to whole grain flour (or making sure I’m using flour produced by a company that ensures their flour is non-GMO certified, like King Arthur).

Given that, I’ve spent the last few days researching different brands.

And this is where I’ve gotten into a bit of a conundrum. Brands like King Arthur or Bob’s Mill tend to be a bit pricey – even with free shipping with Amazon Prime. Others, like Stafford County Flour Mills Hudson Cream Whole Wheat flour, are exceptionally reasonably priced, but shipping is expensive. For instance, a 50-pound bag of their Hudson Cream Whole Wheat is only $12.60 direct. But shipping is $48! See what I mean? Now that’s comparably priced to King Arthur with “free” shipping from Amazon, so I don’t feel too bad about the total price.

On the other hand, I found a great flour called Kansas Diamond White Whole Wheat flour. It has gotten great reviews. But it is produced by Archer Daniels Midland, which is a HUGE agriculture conglomerate on the scale of ConAgra – get the picture? No, I’m not looking at them as the evil empire, but for me at least, I think it’s important to support independent producers; especially independent farms and farmers of which there are fewer and fewer as time passes.

And speaking of Amazon… as of late, I’ve really been doing my best to NOT buy from Amazon. We’ve all heard the tales of their business practices and how they treat their employees, and let’s face it: Jeff Bezos is a wealth-hoarder. I have some serious issues giving my financial support to someone who has so much, but shares so little.

Circling back to the title of this post, I am of the conviction that it’s important to know where your ingredients come from – or at least as much can be known. And I think it’s essential to provide direct support for the small, independent businesses that are quickly being gobbled up by the big corporate machine. Small businesses and the people who work and run them are the salt of the earth. For this writer at least, I want to make sure my life is seasoned with them!

I’m not sure why this is, but it seems that people equate making artisan bread with sourdough. I’ve shown several people pictures of the some of the loaves I’ve made and to a person they ask if they were sourdough loaves. What? Is making sourdough some kind of rite of passage?

To tell you the truth, while I like sourdough bread, my personal preference in taste is for yeasty, non-sourdough bread. Both traditional French and Italian loaves are not sourdoughs. They’re yeasty with an expansive crumb and have crisp crusts. But still, many people who have been following my posts still ask if I’m going to make sourdough. I answer that eventually, I’ll get around to it, but I’m not in a big rush.

But to be completely honest, even though my tastes run to the non-sourdough variety of bread, I have been completely immersed in developing my technique. Like any good cook, I’ve totally focused on my mise-en-place and working out my moves.

I don’t want to just bake different types of loaves or work with different dough hydration rates. I want to make a consistent product. That takes doing things repeatedly and developing my sense of all the ingredients and implements I need to get me to a high level of consistency – mise-en-place.

I don’t have any aspirations of being a professional bread baker, but when it comes to cooking, what I do aspire to be is a great craftsman. This is why I’ve geeked out on bread making. For me, it’s not enough to be able to say I know how to bake bread. I have to KNOW how to bake bread; that is, I have to have developed the craft so that on any given day and in any given environment, I can produce loaves of the same quality. For me, when I learn to cook something, I need to get to the point where the process becomes intuitive.

Take grilling meat, for example. I’m known in my local community as the guy who cooks whole pigs over coals. I’ve been doing it for over 40 years, having learned how to do it from my father when I was teenager. I’ve done it so much that I instinctively know what to do given the size of the pig, the temperature of my pit, the ambient temperature of the day, etc.. In other words, I can roast a pig with my freakin’ eyes closed, and I’m not bragging when I say that. It’s just a matter of fact.

I’m not there yet with baking bread. I’m getting there, that’s for sure. But there are so many things that I still need to learn before I can confidently say that I’ve attained a level of expertise. And because of that, I’m in no rush to make sourdough bread.

I’ve always been an innovator. Though I can create things independently, I’m much better at tweaking and improving an existing process. And I’m not boasting when I say that I’ve had a successful career in software development being an innovator. Call it a quirk of my personality; it’s just who I am.

When I picked up bread making a few months ago, within a week of playing around with recipes from Ken Forkish’s excellent book “Flour Water Salt Yeast,” (FWSY) I started experimenting with different variables in the bread making process. One of those things was what I kind of felt was breaking free of the Dutch oven.

While I loved all the content in FWSY, just a few times into making some of Ken’s bread recipes, I started feeling confined. I didn’t want to just make boules. I wanted to make buns and baguettes. I wanted to make pan bread and batards. But with a Dutch oven, I had one shape and one shape only: The shape of my Dutch oven. It felt incredibly limiting even though I was still learning.

So I started using a baking stone to bake all my bread; actually, two of them as I have a double-deck oven. That opened up a whole new world to me and literally forced me to learn about working dough and forming the gluten network structure. It forced me to learn how to properly shape all kinds of dough to create surface tension. It forced me to learn how to use steam to get a great oven spring.

Once I stopped using a Dutch oven, I had a few epic fails, mostly with collapsing loaves that would come out fairly dense. I’m smiling as I write this because they were ugly loaves! I’m a lot better with shaping now, though I realize I still have a ways to go. But in spite of that, I have a sense of freedom now that I’m not using a single baking medium.

Which leads me to the title of this post…

I was recently on an online forum where people share their bread making techniques and their finished products. Ninety percent of the folks shared their boules, which made me immediately think that they used a Dutch oven. I’ll be honest: When I read how they were making their bread, I immediately thought they kind of cheated.

I know. It makes no sense. These loaves were legit! Great crust, great crumb, and I imagine, great-tasting as well. But having graduated beyond the Dutch oven, I couldn’t help but feel that they were limiting themselves to just that style of bread. I immediately felt ashamed for thinking that, which is why I’m writing this post – kind of as an apology for being a bit condescending.

The plain fact of the matter is that I have completely geeked out on home-based bread making. I spend hours every day researching different techniques and adapting them to my home kitchen. I want to learn how to make all types of different bread. I want to experiment with different hydration rates and different flours. And the funny thing is that I can’t even eat 95% of the bread I make because I have high blood pressure! 🙂

So I realize that my journey is completely different from others. And to avoid ever descending into sanctimonious behavior, I’m going to share my journey in this blog.

Happy baking!