What it's like to bake the Best Sourdough?

good evening everybody i'm super excited because today i have a special guest kristen also known as full proof baking seriously the brats that you are making are just out of this world christine thank you it's so nice to talk to you finally and meet you and thanks for the honor of being interviewed this is cool i was telling i was telling hendrick earlier um that this is the first time i've done an interview or any sort of thing where i'm showing my face so it's a little bit nerve-wracking for me um but i'm glad that you invited me to do this and i think it'll be cool to get out of my comfort zone yes and i mean you have contributed so many amazing things to the baking world i think and whenever i look at your instagram channel i'm always thinking wow this is another level of sourdough baking i mean look just look at the bread like this for instance and i'm super curious what's your story how did all this start kristen that's so i don't know i would never have pictured myself here even like five years ago even three years ago honestly um my background is in biology okay so um i have a phd from northwestern university in chicago and um you know i it's biology so like we there was a component in the laboratory where i worked with um microbes um but our our research was focused on on the gut and the progression of cancer uh like smoking polyps yes very fancy and okay but uh but it was it was actually incredible the experience um and i got a lot out of it but i finished my doctorate and then i had my son and there was no kind of easy way for me to get back in so i just sort of i other mothers may may understand where i'm coming from but i've kind of felt like i lost myself like i had gone from being you know research track and like getting the doctorate and feeling really great about that and then everything changed and now i'm just a mom and i felt very kind of stuck at home and and i had no direction so i think probably when my son was a year and a half old i started doing some uh editing some science editing which i wasn't really my jam i would say but what is science editing sorry for students science editing so whenever you are publishing in in science you you have to submit your papers to peer review so before you do that you usually want to pass those docs through an editor um goes for grant writing so when you want to submit a grant to the government funding you you usually use an editor so it's very dense work um okay i would say wasn't really like my favorite thing to be honest um but around that same time i started making uh yeasted bread so you know pinch of commercial instant yeast from red star uh i literally would take all my ingredients and just put them in my mixer bowl with the yeast mix everything up not knowing what i'm doing and just you know shape it into a log plop it in a tin let it rise bake it okay very it was very easy but it also gave me sort of like this homey feeling okay i just enjoyed that um and so my mother when she baked when i was younger yeah it's amazing that there's nothing like it just providing for your family like that it was yeah i loved it um and then my father-in-law was like you know you're doing um editing you're doing baking he's like you should have a name for yourself so he's like why don't you use a name that works for both of these industries full proof that's where the name comes from and so i started an instagram page after spending you know over a year just sort of lost and and trying out a bunch of different types of what i like recipes more or less and you know the fresh low forum was key for me any question i could come up with it was already there and you know yeah and then there were answers and and discussions and that was so fantastic for me and then kind of on the social bent um finding groups on facebook so facebook had like a perfect sourdough and baking bread with friends and these groups really had this community vibe to them and i i just it was nice like connecting with other bakers in that way and obviously learning and you know posting what i had done to that point and and just hearing feedback and giving my feedback and if you learn that way you learn when you teach yes so my sister told me i should join instagram and so i did that um i remember this moment where i was like should i call myself foolproof baking or foolproof bakes so it's like which one should i do but uh i settled on that and then um learning how to hashtag and all that good stuff and yeah that is really where i think the whole idea of the the art of bread came out for me so two things it was like the art of bread so like thinking like daniel larson and uh bread journey uh anna and you know sourdough nouveau lisa is these these accounts were just mesmerizing to me i was like i'll never achieve what these people have achieved and then there's um on the opposite end of the spectrum there was sort of the science bet or teaching bent so those are like trevor wilson maurizio these accounts were like i was like that's what i want to do you know so like if i'm gonna post bread i'm gonna give back i'm gonna you know cite people and tell you know how i learned something or maybe i don't understand why something happened but i'm gonna post it and i'm just gonna be open and honest and just let's see what happens i never once would have thought that account would have blown up um that was very random um i feel honored to have the position i have now but honestly it's kind of just grown slowly over time and then with the last year with kovid as you know i'm sure everyone wants to make sourdough bread all of a sudden so that was really fun to tackle those more newbie level questions and sort of orient myself for that crowd yeah it's interesting that you mentioned that i think at the start when i would read some suggestions from somebody i would always think okay this is exactly what i have to do i have to change my recipe i have to follow this tip but over time you sort of also develop a feeling for okay this might not work or this is a good idea what to do right yeah yeah so of course so initially the reason i put quotes for recipes earlier is you know initially you try to you think of bread making you want to you want a recipe and as you continue to make that recipe you start realizing oh you know that recipe was written that way because that worked for that baker you know everyone has different flour different sources of water they have you know different starters they have different ways of handling of maintaining their their starter regimen all that good stuff so um there's not really one recipe that works for all and so i think that was sort of that's sort of like the wisdom stage of baking right so you start thinking i have to think about how bread's going to work for me in my so yeah special situation in my environment and that's i think where i really started to get the handle on things so and really also trying to relay that trying to tell other people that point is actually kind of a difficult one because they want a recipe they want you know give me a set of instructions i want to know exactly how much water in grams hopefully in grams not in cups and then you know like working on opening the mind to like you know just because it works for me you might have different flour different starter like it's going to be hot where you are it's not hot here like all of these things it's a big interplay mix it's so but that's what makes it so fun you know yeah i totally agree it's you always have to adapt for for your own environment right and i think that also makes especially sourdough baking so hard because you can never exactly follow hydration formula uh never exactly the timing you have to experiment um on this yourself yep yep or not even some people are afraid of this word experiment but you know just holding back my my big key thing for people is hold back water if you're trying something new and you've never tried it before and you find a recipe online yeah please hold back some of the water put it in a bowl you can measure it all up you know take a few tablespoons out put it in a separate container and then make the bread and if it looks like the video without that extra water don't add more water you know like it's much more complicated than that but that's usually a good trick for yeah i would say so too many people see those amazing recipes and then i see i don't know 85 hydration so hydration that's the water content how much water you should be using for 100 grams of flour and then they tried with their own all-purpose flour at home and then they're wondering something is very very sticky why do i have soup what do you have to do it's so sad because they usually contact me and i don't necessarily get a chance to look at their emergency message right away and so i'm looking at their bowl and they're just like what happened it's like i feel you it's a pool of a pancake batter and i'm like oh no like can i add more flour no not really not at this stage you know yeah yeah so true yeah it's it's it's not so easy at the start i was also so i think my first sourdough bread was actually quite good but then the second and third ones were complete fail and that actually got me started to think okay there is something to this i need to understand what's going on here oh yeah oh yeah i remember my very first bread i wish i took a picture it never crossed my mind i'm not i'm not it's funny where i'm at now but like when i got started taking a picture of my bread seemed hilarious like that would not have been a thing but i remember cutting it i remember what it looked like it was it had not a single like not even fool's crumb like it wasn't even there was not a single air pocket it was just smooth and like wet that's what i was okay yeah that's a sign that you didn't ferment long enough right yeah oh yeah or i forgot i forgot my star i don't know what it was there is no is that what people would call a gummy crump i always get a little bit confused i think people use that term in different ways so i think a lot of people use it as gummy like under fermented like this is like a raw wet dough it didn't open it didn't ferment enough you don't have all those little alveoli bubbles inside so when you bake it the heat just can't penetrate evenly through the whole loaf and i know we'll talk about open crumb later but um but i think a lot of people they are getting fermentation um they are getting openness and then they're like why is my bread gummy and i think it may not be gummy is the right word unless you may be way over fermented which is another story but um a lot of times it's uh it's just like a chewy texture chewy so you know when you cut your bread if it's open but some of the bread sticks to your knife this i would call more like a chewy texture sticky chewy and that's a you know that's a characteristic of the flower you're using right so a very high protein flour is going to give a more chewy crumb that maybe maybe you think of as wet and then a more lower protein flour like an all-purpose is going to give you um not dry but more tender and delicate you know if you tear it tears right away like like a sandwich bread and which kind of texture do you personally prefer if you had to choose one of them so you must know from looking at my page i like the chewy breads um i like that they're i i like that they're like moist and i don't like gummy i'm not going there but i do like when i pull it apart it just sort of like a rubber band for a little while you know like tears apart nicely but different breads i like different things i would not want that in my sandwich bread i would not want that in my in my dinner rolls you know so it kind of depends on what you want what you want uh your bread to be right do you want it to be the star of the dinner party or do you just want it to be a side to support the main course a little bit absolutely yeah and you know heartier breads like what you you generally make um you don't really want those to have the same characteristics as you would you know a very light open fluffy it's a different type of bread you want to choose the flour accordingly so if you're talking if we're talking about a bread like this is a bread like this always sort of of that wet consistency inside or can that also be done with an all-purpose flour for instance you know i also want to say i work with very high hydration i have flour to back that up i'm lucky to have that flour but um but in general my dough is very very wet so when i bake it it needs to be high high heat and i need to sort of leave it in the oven after the bake for another 30 minutes 45 minutes just to get rid of all the extra moisture because they can get to be wet and i don't like that so no that i wouldn't i wouldn't say that loaf would be wet but it is using you know high quality okay and it's flower um but if you look at it you can kind of see here one more time you can kind of see like this was a mix of flour you know i don't like to use all white flour um i like to use mixtures of grains and things so this would this would be like a mix it's not i don't want to say this is not ultra open it is but at the same time you can kind of see it's fluffy um but yeah all of my breads are generally a mix yeah they look amazing and my next question would be i mean i'm a complete instagram noob okay so earlier i wanted to share on my story that i'm talking to you tonight and then i got an email from you saying hey hendrick um something is wrong with your story i think you forgot to add the link to it um yes so i had to just delete it and repost it you know what you know what i'm getting i'm getting older um i'm getting older and i notice that when when the app changes and they do this often so they do this on you know facebook and instagram and all these these different apps but it drives me crazy because i like the little add a post button got moved for like a month and i i just i was yelling at my phone i was like why why this to me um and then um now they have you know igtv they have reels they have they have other things too i don't even i've never done it i don't i don't know how to do it and it feels like just more new things i just i lose myself so yeah also i had a private instagram account but i seriously have never used it and now suddenly i i have this instagram account and i really have no idea what to do with it pretty much yeah so i i have a sister who is three years younger than me so i i was born in 83 and my sister was born in 86 and something about that cut off she gets things faster than i do for sure so for me it was her helping me so i when i first posted my photos on instagram i didn't use a single hashtag because i didn't know what that was and she's like no one can see your bread no one can see it in the catalog so i was like all right teach me so i get some tips from her um and then i just learn slowly how to use the technology okay youtube youtube is like a completely different animal different game yes you are rocking the youtube channel so thank you i have a problem with showing my face um on camera which is i think a definite negative when it comes to youtube on instagram it works but on youtube maybe not so much so um so yeah for me it's just harder to to nail down the youtube and also i find that um on youtube the the people there are a little different like it's just not um as homey feeling as it feels on instagram and even on some pages on on facebook there's more mediation somehow on instagram where youtube is just sort of like whoa anyone could say whatever they want uh scares me that's scary too so i don't it's like a war zone i should i should do a video on hendrik reads mean comments something like this i get so many amazing comments from time to time it's a war zone it's brutal sometimes but you learn to deal with it the first video i ever posted on youtube was a rough one for me because i didn't know i didn't know people were going to be commenting on on my voice or the lack of a voice or um you know when i'm doing coil folds if i'm wearing my ring like this is like these are big issues for some people and so i you know this is my homemade spread i'm just sharing with you what i do like you don't have to be so pastel yeah and one thing that i for you always have to play the youtube algorithm that's what i personally find a little bit annoying because i'm not the person for instance i don't like to use clickbait titles but if you want to beat the algorithm it's all about how many people are clicking your videos for instance and you sort of have to go into this zone like the best bread although i would never being an engineer i would never yes something yeah i would never claim myself that i'm making the best bread i'm probably just making a below average bread but if you want to succeed on youtube if you want to grow a little bit of an audience then you just have to play this game and it's personally i find that very frustrating from time to time because that's not me you say that yeah i saw the title in the youtube video and i was like i don't know about that title but i get it i do understand where you're coming from and i don't know it's like a even the word like influencer bothers me and yeah you sort of have to get over it i don't know it's it's just like just to figure out coexist and and make it work for you and keep it authentic and that's very important open and just do what you do best and and try to love the process if you start feeling the stress and like all these little things about you know oh i've like sometimes i'm like oh i gotta post a blue bread soon like i haven't yeah i haven't seen a blue bread recently but that sort of takes the fun out of that [Applause] let's talk about that a little later that looks amazing that's witchcraft oh my gosh that that came from ratty extraordinary bites on facebook and on instagram she is playing with these blue butterfly pea flowers and making a tea and using the tea to make the bread but we'll talk about it later and i have a question for you because my pictures always look so incredibly bad and then i mean i'm seeing pictures like this from you or this how do you take those amazing pictures what's the secret okay there is a little bit of a secret okay um secret is lighting what what's that so it's lighting so like lighting okay yeah and finding that perfect angle on an overcast day and god forbid you have a bright sun-filled day because that's gonna mess up your photography um and then i really think that the knife is important so like when you slice your bread you're gonna think i'm nuts but i clean my knife between each slice so that i can get a clean you know smooth knife and then i can cut another slice if i need to um okay so then this is especially true for croissants by the way because you want to maintain those honeycomb you know the layers but the pattern so if you use you know a knife that's just hacking at your bread a dull knife you're going to mess up the crumb it's just going to look gummy and messed up and that's not where i so i need it so when you you saw without a lot of pressure pretty much um yeah i mean you got to get a sharp knife okay great sharp knife and just gently gently back and forth and really it's the really that first slice is going to be your best one so try to like yield your bread you hold it up you're like where's the best i wish i had like some sort of like like an mri or ct scan of the brush this is the best place right here and i would say the first well i always like to slice my bread in the middle as well because then i can take a nice picture and i always like to call that uh the tenderloin piece pretty much because those slices in the middle are like the tenderloin of sourdough baking pretty much they are perfect for making a grilled cheese for instance i love that that's amazing tenderloin and do you just take pictures with your phone or do you have a special camera set up to take pictures i for the last four years i've been using um this is like a shout out to google pixel so okay um i like the camera i mean i uh oh and i always shoot in portrait mode portrait mode just sort of like brings the front center and sort of you like you can see that you know what's behind that picture my closet what so i i take photos all over my house like an insane person um i have way more but to get that shot that i like you know that's what you got to do it's so dumb this is taking on my stairs so you're you're just taking the bread with you you're trying to find that perfect lightning and then your and by the way when you take your pictures you cannot face your bread directly at the sun it it drowns out all the holes so what you want is the holes to be in shadow okay set that top layer of bread to just barely pick up the light so that you get this crystal like just slight uh lit up the areas surrounding the lg that make that makes sense but that's also amazing right that you can just take your ordinary smartphone and start making amazing pictures like this these these phones these days they're i have a friend who is a photographer she actually photographs for my um my e-commerce live my starter drawers and she um yeah she uses her phone a lot of the times to photograph because she said the quality of the cameras are so great now so yeah it makes it easy for me because all i need to do is you know just turn up the light maybe a little bit and just snap away okay i definitely need to i go into a food photography workshop i think it sounds like a fun workshop actually bread it's not even food it's specifically bread photography it's like it's open chrome photography that's a specialized workshop and so i mean last year your instagram account blew up when everybody was starting to bake sourdough right how you now as far as i can see you have 360 000 followers by now how do you keep that community from uh yeah from from working because i mean that's at that large size it's not really possible to answer everybody right or how do you go about that i always find it very hard so yeah so before covid hit i think it was around the 150 000 mark just to give you an idea of how much it's grown just in the last year wow um which is kind of it's overwhelming i mean it's it's kind of scary is what i'm trying to say so when i post something now i'm very um i really try to go back dig up all citations anybody who might have inspired me along the way um so giving credit where credit's due is a big thing making sure i'm not you know saying something that's a little off that might insult a certain crowd of people um it's kind of it's it's just a little nerve wrecking every time i hit that post button you know yeah i still mess up the last time i posted pretzels not the one from a couple days ago but before that i i casually mentioned that these were bagels somewhere in the post i was like these bagels because i was talking about lie and the dip so yeah i got a bunch of comments from people and they just like bagels they're not bagels they're pretzels and then another thing was um i used recently i got a bunch of this amazing flower from central milling which is this uh it's a it's a mill here in the states just awesome quality flower in general but i got something called uh it's made from a winter wheat and it's like 11 and a half percent protein and i called it an all-purpose flour oh my goodness so i had my dms and emails just like blew up and people were like this is not you know this is not in all-purpose flour and i was convinced i you know i was like you know it handles like a bread flour absolutely i changed it i just edited my script and i was like all right we're not calling it that anymore this is an artisan bread flower and it is it truly is but just you know having to manage that expectation is sort of true overwhelming and um so that's not really answering your question i guess but um i feel you though what i do is i read everything i promise i read everything but i can't i can't comment back on everything i used to do that even last year i was doing that and it was just i was spending every hour of my day on instagram harding people's comments and trying to comment back and i am so grateful for all of those comments it's amazing and i'm sorry i feel guilt like you wouldn't believe to not be able to get back to everyone right but uh in like by direct messages what i'll do is i'll read everything and if i see a question that's coming up often enough i know it's time to post on that topic so i of let the community drive me where to go so if i get enough people talking about starter care you know i'll try to put in a post about starter care almost all of my posts that are experimental in nature or like you know a b testing so like side by side change one variable that's almost all coming from other people asking questions and you try to figure out what is the best way to like help and answer the largest number of people at one time so that would be in the form of a post and it's i promise you those posts are for the community like that's where i'm trying to go with it or at the very least if it's something i can't dive into i'll i'll try to comment that person and be like here's some resources you know you can check out michael wilson or pasta madre and you can talk about you know where to get the information maybe if i know it i can help out but so are you using instagram on your phone or are you using instagram on your computer both so one of the things that i love so i just like bashed instagram for updates but one of the best updates was recent and you can now comment back to dms on the laptop ah right yes i love that feature because i what i'll do in the mornings is i'll usually dedicate an hour to just answering questions so i will i'll have my tabs up because it's always very it's common questions so i'll have posts they're just buried you know so i have to go through and find those and i can just do it all on my laptop now which is so much easier than yeah you can also put you can also post from your uh from your browser on your computer i don't know if you saw that that you can also create uh real posts from your desktop what do you mean i don't understand so normally you when i upload a post i would always do this via my phone yeah that on your laptop now yes you can do that on your laptop but you have to hack it a little bit you have to inspect element in your browser and then you have to say okay i'm in iphone mode and the moment you're in iphone mode it will show you the button to uh to publish a post on your desktop i can show you later your computer background is coming in handy here yeah but i feel i feel you i also feel guilty because there are so many comments and i always want to answer all of them as well but sometimes it's a little bit hard because you also at the same time you want to be innovative right and you want to test new things so yeah how do you allocate the time between answering comments and being innovative trying new things right so right now is actually sort of an overwhelming time in my life in bread because i have a lot of these little side projects going on and you know they don't work out the first time like i want to test something and it doesn't work so there's a repeat like with with uh variation maybe that's not quite where i want it to be so i'll have to bake it again so these take up i don't bake that much i bake a loaf a day maybe maybe low for two if i really need you know i've got a lot of work to do um but yeah in in those cases i'll just you know i'll try to focus my energy there and and maybe take a few days off of instagram because i noticed the comments go down after you know two three days you have sort of a break on that third or fourth day and sometimes i need that so i just won't post as much but if i'm ready to put something out there you know i try to dedicate a larger portion of my next day or the day of to answering questions and and trying to get it where people are having trouble yeah well that's when it's on the top of their mind anyway so it's good to like get in there right away and answer questions somebody asked me um the other day a couple people asked me the other day when i posted pretzels they were like um is it safe to eat the pretzels after you bake them like how many pretzels is safe to eat after you dip them in the lie because this is like a a caustic toxic thing right but um you know i was like right away i have to tell them like it's okay to press it like it's okay to eat pretzels this bakes off like it changes in chemical nature so you can eat the pretzel so like some of the questions are more like pertinent and more like timely and some of the questions are something i can work on later or message that person privately and answer the questions but like right now i have all this flower in one week's time i've managed to to get all this new flower to work with and so i i'm sort of like splitting my time between you know trying to post and do experiments and then also you know work on these side project flaps sort of things and that stuff doesn't all go onto instagram so it's sort of like it's for me to learn and and get back in touch with like mills and tell them my experience with flower but that doesn't necessarily get put on social media there's a lot of bakes that don't make it social media you know like only some of my most my my favorites or the ones that are kind of fun to look at yes those go up there now that you mentioned the topic pretzels so we germans love pretzels especially in bavaria in the southern part of germany and i was visiting a milk last year and then monica the owner of the mill she as a gift she just gave me a pretzel and apparently there is a baker next to the mill very close and all this baker does is bake pretzels his whole life and apparently he's using a very random technique to make the pretzels i wonder one day i want to have him on an interview as well and just ask him about how he bakes his pretzels oh that sounds fun so did you get to see him make the pretzel no unfortunately not but as far as i know so his secret is a little bit that he dries out the pretzel before he's baking the pretzel that's a key thing so okay can i tell you kind of funny story so yes please i just shaped all these fun pretzels uh the other day and my son was watching he's like do this shape next so so fun um had them all in my on my tray and my tray wouldn't fit in my fridge luckily it's cold outside that day so i took the tray outside and put it on my deck uncovered it needs to be uncovered so it dries out the that top layer right but it's outside uncovered and we have squirrels oh no i had to on the other side of our deck in the backyard i had to sprinkle some seeds and nuts just to keep them away from the okay but it worked they they left them alone so it would have looked fun though a half eaten pretzel by a squirrel little nibble marks yes that didn't make the cut to my to my post that's the truth behind those pretzels what would you say then coming back to your instagram account what would you say is the best way to ask you a question so if somebody wants to ask you a question how what would be the best way for you to be able to answer most of the comments yeah so don't message me right after a post that's getting a lot of traction um i think you're going to show this video of this bread blooming in the oven with the yes after that's that post went like viral in bread terms and okay i got just an onslaught of messages and i and comments i can't it's hard to it's hard to even read them all in that situation um so i again if you notice after that day i went like four days before posting again just to give myself a little break after that let me put let me put on that video now because i just have a comment uh for me just says here as a comment on the video that i want to show what is going on i have no idea i'll just put that here on the live stream for everybody to watch look at this amazing sorcery i've never seen this before what is going on here kristen oh my goodness okay so this is i had to go back to my um my original post here so the technique is from uh joseph pasquale if i'm pronouncing that correct so this is where you have a two different doughs they're both fermented but one is low low in hydration enough low hydration where you can roll it out actually if you go to the post prior to that one there is uh like a how-to video okay how to make that bread but you basically roll out your you ferment your dough um you shape one the large middle portion into a bowl pretty tight and then you roll out the the stiff dough you put oil on the stiff dough okay seeds on the outside of the bowl for that it's super challenging by the way that was not the first time i'd done that so you have to be very careful but you you put it on like a plate of seeds um have the seeds attached and then you put that on your stiff oiled dough okay you wrap it up you put it in your bananas and you let it overproof a little bit so you let it rise uh in a warmer spot or let it proof for at a for a longer period of time so it's really quite puffed when you go to bed then you score the top um and then you bake it and that's what that's what happens i that's just amazing so the wait so the inside is the stiff though and the outside is the not as stiff though or the other way around reverse okay okay it's um i did a little stencil on top so that design was more or less inspired by sourdough nouveau okay and rassi extraordinary bites so rats you did that too um just it's so that's incredible it was so fun to make and i'm i just i didn't know the precise measurements of like how much water to add to the top loaf or or the the main dough so it took a few tries before it became something that looked proper and pretty is is this then like a fun project that you like to do from time to time just to test and see how it works out or yes so most of my instagram page is these um artisan hearth loaves almost always batard shape um for and there's a reason for that but uh once in a while i'll just i'll need to bake something else you know pretzels bagels okay the dinner rolls something like that monstrosity um and it's fun it keeps it interesting for me like on top of on top of all the other breads that i'm making constantly that don't make it to social media once in a while i want there to be like a just a really fun bread that yeah and look at it and it's i find it best though when you do those to help people out and let them know how you did it yeah so not just uh post it and say look how cool but to help them along too i think that's where i think that's the key of making that account full proof baking works so well is the helping aspect of it i i actually also have a challenge because i have some russian friends great russian friends and they challenged me to bake a matrocha bread you know the russian dolls which are stacked on top of each other and the idea is pretty much that you basically what's the best part about bread i think that's the crust right if you have that crispy crust and they challenged me hendrick you want to make a bread that's pretty much stacked with multiple layers of crust where you start to bake one bread and then you wrap that in another bread and you wrap that in another bread slowly your bread gets bigger and bigger is it sort of like um so when you cut it sort of rainbow pattern like different colors so um there might have been a beer too much involved when we came up with the idea but the idea is pretty much that you just have a bread inside of a bread then you cut through it and then you see another bread inside of another bread and of course the smaller breads also have crusts so you'll have more crust and more crust pretty much stacking up oh my goodness i don't know if that is going to work in practice but you should absolutely try it that's hilarious you know um i have this banatin that i haven't really worked with that much but it's very long like it's like a it's a batard shape and it's almost it's not quite a baguette but it's very like elongated that gives you a lot more crust because when you bake it oh i see it's just more it's just more like a tube okay more like a baguette but it's not a baguette it's it's okay shape for elongate if it's hard you might like that one i'll have to show you that i just saw somebody here on the live chat and that is matthew james duffy the professor of sorrow yep and i wanted to ask you because that was a question by one of the viewers um and that was i'm so sorry for not being able to pronounce your name let me echiots vergara vergara asks which have been the bakers that influenced you the most next to james duffy of course duffy's a good friend he's he's got the coolest job yes he like is an actual professor mind-blowing how cool that is so um i would say the baker's influenced me the most so earlier on it was definitely danny aio's the fresh loaf for him that was everything and i still go on there i still absolutely i'm learning from that and and it's it's great to just go on there and see what people are talking about from time to time um maurizio absolutely um the perfect loaf is just fantastic because he posts the why you know he's not just like use let's make bagels he's like let's use high mountain central milling company flour because it's high in protein it gives you a very chewy bread and then why how much water to add and he explains why which is very important and then on instagram i would say a lot of you know trevor wilson just my hero that's just so amazing and on the same topic books that's actually the only book that i've read on sourdough was his open crumb mastery i always mention it in my workshops and any time i get the chance it's just such a great read and you'll notice that a lot of the techniques i employ are you know like the coil folds um so much just deep dive posts on that one aspect of bread baking so vitally important to me when i was just starting out um i think so too right trevor has contributed so much to the baking world i mean i i tell people when i read that book um it was just light bulb moment after light bulb moment for me just so many things that i kind of had experienced but couldn't quite put them together the right way yeah he blames them so well and with humor and with you know again that like honesty and just yeah he's it's a it's a great read highly recommended um and then um autumn kitchen chew c so her she had this post a couple years ago where she talked about her her method and um she was really instrumental in getting me to understand the benefits of lamination folding we can discuss like semantics of this term whatever we all know what it means this is a different style of lamination or so i can't see the video but um is it running on your end yeah wait a second this is like stretching your dough out like a pizza and it's it's really nice for for early strength building in the dough or at least structuring and organizing your your dough your gluten so i love it i love it as a baker who only makes one loaf a day it's okay so fun and it tells me a lot about my dough if i stretch it out and it tears this is usually a sign i shouldn't be doing lamination on this given dough you know there's no point in doing it it's over stressing the dough it's tearing it's not good um and then what i use it mostly for nowadays is i see that count um yes good job good job uh what i use it for for these days is mostly for getting ingredients into the dough so seed sprinkling okay um lemon zest lemon zesting is that a word or layering doughs is a big one there are some inclusions here so those you would also be adding during the lamination stage for instance absolutely okay i also i use this technique that i i talk about a lot it's called the split dough technique i'll have one dough that i prepare say but i cut it in half and i'll leave one more or less alone and that one just sort of is the high integrity baseline dough and then the other dough maybe i'll add in oats or i'll like fold in something or like potato or something that would disrupt the gluten but maybe i don't want to disrupt all of the gluten or maybe so that's more swirled like okay bread and for that i like to split the dough into two and and add color to one dough and not the other whatever it might be so i love lamination for that it it helps me bake a lot of different types of bread and it okay incorporate ingredients so when you're mostly baking then you're all mixing by hand or you're also sometimes using a stamp mixer i do use a stand mixer sometimes so there's there's days when maybe i want to make a larger bread maybe i want uh to just maybe i don't have a very long auto lease so i will sort of use my mixer to build up some strength in the dough like a 20 minute audience and then i'll throw it in the mixer um usually very high hydration um i use like the paddle so like i'll really whip it okay um and yeah so i use the mixer i don't was i forgot the the main question there but no the the question was so you sometimes use a stand mixer as well and what my next question would be follow up what would be a recommendation that you would give somebody when using a stand mixer that's that's a good one so um add the liquid ingredients first so if you put dry in and then you put wet on top the there's always like this dry bits on the bottom this totally depends on your mixer but i'm using the kitchenaid professional series the the 600 okay um okay but the the if you're using high hydration dough you can use the paddle and it really helps out a lot there but what i'll do is water then the flour say and then okay i'm just gonna scoop out the dough when i add the lavon and put the lavon underneath and then mix that and then i'll scoop out the dough again and put the salt on the bottom and then it's just sort of picks it up as it goes around could you please say that one more time was it levon because i never know how to pronounce it okay so both is going to work [Laughter] okay that's that's a good tip um follow-up question on that because he said you were baking once a day typically what would be the bread that you would make for yourself on a daily basis your sort of default bread that you personally like to eat so yeah it would it would probably not be one of the the crazy fun circus breads um it would probably be more like uh i so there's some wheat grains that i really like to to work with they taste really good so okay i'm focusing a lot on flavor so for instance i'll just throw a name out um meadowlark organics which is a local um mill farm in mill here um in chicagoland um they have a bolted bread flower and so bolting is where you have some of the bran and the germ okay in the bread so it's not just a fully sifted you know extraction flour its flavor is incredible so i would probably make something high in that for instance i also like wheat that has um these like flakes in it so the bread isn't totally milled perfectly you know um finely it's it's got some texture and some differences in it so oh yeah that's amazing i love that too it gives it a nice texture yeah um and yeah just sort of maybe upping the whole grain component so i like red usually between 30 and 50 whole wheat is probably my favorite for for and i do have some pictures of yuki that one is i think was it 30 or 40 whole wheat yes something like that i don't remember but i love this this bread this is probably if i had to choose a favorite crumb style it would be i have two but this is one of them this is one of my favorites and i noticed at the bottom of your bread here it's a little bit darker i'm wondering at which temperature are you baking your breath so again super high hydration i like to put this in the oven i bake it for so do you have i don't i can't think of celsius i think it's too look look what i prepared here a small table with fahrenheit and subtleties oh my goodness see this is the amazing thing about nerds this is amazing okay so i do so oh you don't have my number so i do 485 fahrenheits for the first so what is that 250 yeah the first 20 minutes and then i do uh 460 450 460 for the last 20 minutes but then i'll leave it in the oven for a good up to an hour just to slow cool and i think that i get that darker bottom doing that sometimes um but it's important because i really want to bake out that extra moisture that's important okay um the other thing is i'm using cast iron here so i'm using the challenger bread pan i have i used to have not a lot of luck with the bottom it would get very burnt when i first switched over from my stone method of baking but i figured out that or i didn't figure this out trevor wilson figured out that if you put like an air gap underneath the um pan directly under the pan it can help mediate some of like it can just prevent excess heat from hitting the bottom of your your loaf so your pan is um sitting on how do you even call this in english i don't know two ways uh actually three so one way is if you have a challenger pan you can flip the top upside down and put the bread on top you have to have a tall oven to do something like that because you don't want it to burn on the top of the loaf um another way is take a sheet pan up facing up and then a sheet pan facing down and on top um but the way i do it i have a broil pan so it's like those black broil pans you can broil okay so dad has experienced quite some bakes that pan oh yeah oh yeah is it still safe to make a salmon out of it or i have so i don't use i have a different one for actual boiling i don't want to get any oil on it it would probably smoke up if i don't clean it perfectly okay it's really interesting that you mentioned the temperatures because i was i switched to a higher temperature around the temperature that you have been using and suddenly i stopped getting oven spring on my loaves of bread and okay then i slowly work myself down with the bread wouldn't rise as much anymore and then i just tested i kept reducing the temperature and i noticed that because i was previously preheating my challenger bread pan on a stone and that sort of lowered the actual heat inside of the bread pan and once i removed the stone suddenly i stopped getting oven spring but i didn't think about it that my my pen was now hotter than it was before so i would definitely there's there's this range that i think is great for oven spring and you're in it right now but if i if i have too low of a temperature i get a lackluster oven spring it just doesn't have the same oof okay i think you know i think where this is coming from is the heat needs to penetrate into the very core of your loaf so this also is dependent on the size of your bread so baby bread is gonna be a little bit more challenging to rise evenly than a little bread that is very quick to heat throughout and the goal here is to heat it all up and expand those alveoli before it crusts over right so if it crossover it's doomed to not have the same sort of oven spring and the ear if that's your aesthetic um then there's a problem with baking too hot so if you bake too hot it crusts over way too fast and so it won't fully have a chance to to open up the inside is it's it's it's tighter and it just it's not it's not good either so there but there is a range and i think the range is about 450 to for maybe even upwards of 500 just be careful when you get to 500 that it does not go over 500 because then you run into the over heating problem and do you typically go ahead and use an ice cube or something like this for instance inside of your dutch instead of your challenge or bread pan or what do you do it's really kind of interesting so we moved to a rental house this last fall and i had only baked bread in my one oven for years it was a kitchenaid oven and so i had a certain handle on how that oven heated you know the evenness of the bake of the browning in the bake all that stuff then i moved here and it's a thermador oven another great oven brand i think um but that one is it bakes a little cool so i have to turn the pressure up and then i check the temperature of my pan to get the actual real temperature before i put my dough in but that oven for whatever reason um i was losing blisters okay so i threw in an ice piece of ice because my friend trevor or not um my friend jim challenger mentioned it um he'd been advocating this for years and so i was like i'll just try it out and boom blisters so interesting i think it was a lack of it can an oven be drier inside a inside of a vessel i don't know so those are the blisters we're talking about everybody so you see here on the crust those tiny blisters in ancient times they would be considered a defect but these days personally i gotta say if you have blisters on your bread just that extra level of crispness does that it's just a bread from a different planet when you press on this bread there is nothing like it it just shatters this crust shatters it's just i don't know how they could have considered i know that they i've read that before too but it's not a defect it's amazing it's amazing i totally agree yeah yeah so my theory a little bit i'm still testing right now i hope to get another video uh out on that topic soon um is that maybe the ice cube just helps to lower the temperature inside of the dutch oven while still maintaining the hot temperature from the bottom because you preheated it right the heat the steam the way that the air bubbles are just under the surface um which comes down you know also to the fermentation to the type of flour you're using there's a lot of aspects so okay uh i use a to get the most blisters and i have a post said list a couple posts on blistering like really insane number of blisters on one of them like it was hard to hold the bread without them shattering all over okay but that bread i had done like a like a cooler a warmer final proof in a wine cellar like in a wine fridge sort of scenario so it was i under bulked and increased the the final proof and it rose in that final proof okay interesting that really that was like the moment of the most ridiculous looking also i had noticed i had gone through a lot of my old pictures and and sort of catalogued them so i was like blisters no blisters the blisters comes from a really powerful fermentation one way or another so having a really fast rising active starter and then um throwing in something like sprouts sprouted grain seemed to give it a little boost as well okay that those are some really good tips i'm sorry there's like you know 20 variables i think so too there's never gonna be one simple answer yeah that's that's the problem with saudo right you have one uh one answer to one problem and then there are ten more questions that you have to ask yourself oh my goodness yes so i was um i was learning more but i want to learn more about starches and enzymes things so i took a deep dive one day i think i was on the computer for five hours reading about starches and amylase and all the stuff and i'm writing notes i have you know schematics and it just takes me back to like basic biology in college again but i realize as i read and as i make bread and as i as i try new things i know so little it's such a little amount yes i know how to make one type of bread with slight variation here and there and then there's just this world that yeah so um i also talked to nikki gusto from central milling just the other day he he was so generous with his time and we went over um some specs about how to look at flour it was okay it was over an hour long conversation by the end i felt like my head was gonna explode okay how little i know like and also there's a difference between home baker and there's a difference between like the miller or the difference between the large volume baker and i don't you know i i'm in my own little bubble and i just learn more but as you say when you learn something this presents 10 new questions that you now need to to go and see yes yes and you also feel more insecure about making the next breath because with all that knowledge there's so many more things that you have to when someone asks you a seemingly simple question now you've got so many things that light up in your brain and you're like oh yeah this this all they want to know is what temperature do i bake my bread at and i'm just like oh no yeah so many levels to this answer there's there's one question which many people have asked me before as well i'm just gonna put it here jim just asked it on the chat thank you so much jim um he lives above sea level does he need to have does he have to do changes with dough i i have no idea what do you think i i've looked at so i'm not at high altitude i'm sorry i'm not an expert on this you know who you should look up maurizio mauricio i think he is at higher elevation um but you know i think it's something to do with the it's drier so you have you know you have to add maybe more water get the inconsistency maybe the ferment goes a little slower or faster i don't remember okay sorry it helps so maurizio is the guy you want to check out jim um he might have some answers to your questions a whole article on this a whole post on this and i think uh the fresh loaf always has answers so look there too and yeah there is a difference in the pick there is a difference in the bake because under seal oh my god so i know in the netherlands you live under sea level that's crazy right i think sometimes it's like minus 10 10 meters or so keys right that you six meters below sea level for instance they need to have water pumps just to survive not good yeah that i mean it does affect the bake how you want to bake i think you have to bake at hotter temperatures when you're high altitude to get the same browning so by that logic you would bake at a lower temperature below sea level right i have one more question and we briefly talked about that you mentioned that what about if you work in a bakery and you have to make multiple loaves at the same time would you say that it's even possible to grab to get such an open crump when you're making multiple loaves at the same time from one batch or is it something you can only do when you have one dough at the same time what's your experience there there are some incredible high volume bakers dan the baker i always just like to go watch him shaping his dough and stuff um yes i think it's absolutely possible i think there's a difference though when you're talking about a home baker this is where i start to feel like less than because what i do and what and i try not to think in this in this sort of way but the high volume bakers um there's a baker here in chicago named greg wade and he he does bread for the public and quality breads and his bread is all amazing and it tastes amazing and it's just incredible if you ever get a chance to eat it but um and he's like pumping out hundreds of breads a day and they're all okay just delicious and but they don't they don't quite look the same i think the bread that's being baked in one at a time all of my focus is on that one bread you know okay i am babying that thing to the extreme okay also i'm also feeding my starter in a different way than i probably would if i was working in a high volume setting okay um these micro feeds i do the the three times a day like a crazy does your start to have a name it does his name is ozzy ozzy named after ozzy osbourne [Laughter] my mom's favorite bread or one of her favorite bands is black sabbath i was raised on this music and i just thought as the osborne's crazy it's a crazy train and i was mixing my starter and i was like yeah this starter is crazy it was rising so high so fast um so what would have what would have to be the price tag on a bread like this if you babysit just breath the whole day it would be very expensive i assume right i don't yeah i don't know i mean i think i think that sourdough should when you find good sourdough price it accordingly because there's so much work that goes into it and time and yeah and you have to baby sourdough even if it's something that you're putting 100 loaves out obviously after a while you have a system you have you know you have your consistency based on your flour and you know it works and so you just make a bunch more of that of that bread um but i think when the thing that i like doing and the reason why i could never open a bakery is i like doing a different bread every time i bake so true i probably will never bake that exact bread again i can't do that same bread again because my starter is different now than it was in the fall than it was in the spring and summer you know it's just everything is constantly changing and trying to find that consistency um i work i work in this little bubble like i said and i have um a basic method and that method in my little bubble works very well for me i add in something and i see how it affects my results and then okay trying to like i said usually that first bread may not work out perfectly so i'll try again and i will try again until i can get it you know assuming it's a good tasting bread i'll try it again and again until i get it to where it's something that's um something i would feel comfortable posting on on instagram or whatever how many breaths would you say you fail based on your own judgment i see you asked this question um i thought about it yesterday because i was thinking you would ask um so you talk about like a success rate so i i think probably my success rate is like 75 that's great that's pretty good i think it's a pretty good success rate but there's absolutely the bread but i think you know it comes back to me not exploring every possible thing i'm working on this basic method and then just making little tweaks yes yeah and i still think regardless even if a baker might consider it a failure then you give this bread to your neighbors or to some friends and they're just saying wow this is this is the best bread i've ever eaten in my life i know i the blisters when i was when i was looking back at really old bakes of mine yeah they they i would gift them out all the time i still do but my friends would take them and they never once said a thing about oh this bread doesn't have an ear or this bread doesn't have the crackly crust or this bread some of them were completely under fermented right like fools crumb galore but they love it and that's the great thing about bread i don't think of bread i try not to think of bread as you know this one's successful this one's not or this one failed for some reason it still tastes great and it's still something you put love and your energy into and we should try yes in as much a positive light as possible it like hurts me when i get people who message me and they they're sad they say why does my bread not look like yours you know uh frown face cry face i'm just like don't don't think of it that way you know i i you know i do different things in my kitchen than the average baker would i don't bake once a week i don't keep my starter in the fridge like these things affect the final product i've been doing this now for five years it's just it's gonna be different it's it's a learning progression over time and not every bake is instagramable it doesn't mean it's not a beautiful even perfect bread you know so how much do you like how much do you rely then on timings these days do you have your own timings or how much is it of a look and feel of the dough how important is that i will set it if i set a timer and i go by timer i'm usually gonna still be okay because i always use the same amount of starter not always i mostly use the same amount of starter starter is always at the same approximate peak level i use approximately the same flower combinations um what i what i'll usually do is i'll set a timer about a half an hour earlier than my normal six hour bulk period okay and obviously i'm always touching base with the dough every time i do a coil fold right so i come back to the dough every hour at least and i'm looking at it and i'm going what does this dough need now i am no way judging when to do a coil fold based on timers not at all that goes out the window it's it's that is all by looking at the dough okay and how it feels i yes when i do a coil i'm i'm judging i'm judging how it's feeling so if i'm doing a coil and i'm like oh this seems really tight i'm gonna skip the other half of this coil fold and only do like one axis not the other that is fake to bake dependent depends what i put in it um so yeah it's a lot based on feel and um i do have two more follow-up questions on that because i've seen you using a technique not in exactly the same jar you call the i don't know how to pronounce it the ali quote jar eliquid jar yes is that word coming from your ph phd in biology we would do we would have little aliquots of of things that we would have to then freeze down in the deep freezer okay it's funny how that word just is what it is and so i just use it just expecting everyone to know whatever um so what the the the concept there is um i was looking at my dough in the little dish my single little dough in this big ish eight by eight dish and i was like how in the world are bakers judging how even if this thing is rising or not and and also from like a teaching standpoint how can i visualize that this other person's dough is rising when i cannot see it in real life so the idea of shrinking down my 8x8 tub into something that would be the same volumetric dimensions as someone working with high volume baking so like those big cambro tubs full of dough where you can literally mark with a marker and just judge oh it's risen 50 or whatever it is you can see it you can't see it in these little dishes so cutting off this little piece of dough stemmed from that concept okay so after coming up with this idea i have seen it since and i think probably this technique has been around for hundreds of years to help monitor dough rise um i saw it on on a youtube video about panatone first dough rise okay even though you kind of see it they were saying like it's nice to like take a little piece off and that was so cool to see it in that application um i think it's really helpful though it's really helpful i think so too it's funny when i made my first how to make open crumb basic loaf whatever video for youtube the one that's getting you know more traction than the others um i had a version of that video with the aliquetra but the problem was as i used it more and more i noticed i would have differences in rise depending on the hydration of the dough depending on the type of flour i was using um and so these things i i want i don't want to over complicate this you know i was thinking i don't want to make this so complicated that it's starting to go using words like aliquot i don't want to talk about this what i want to talk about is you know you know connecting with the dough and like looking at it okay makes sense so i i brought that out in an instagram post and i think it i think it can be helpful but i think it's only helpful when you use it in one bread recipe um bake after bake after bake after bake and sort of trying to keep the conditions the same as possible same temperature same hydration all of that um and using it to sort of gauge like oh the last time i over proofed so next time i'm gonna only let that aliquot rise to eighty percent not a hundred percent or whatever it might be so these days when you bake in private do you still use the same method or is it then mostly that you rely on sort of the look and feel of the dough look and feel what could feel yeah that's interesting but it's helpful like when i do consoles i always tell people if they can handle it um find a little slicer cut off a little piece of your dough that way i can at least see if the dough is rising and by the true you really have to mix that dough well so when you when i do an aliquot i'm sort of over mixing the dough to make sure that the salt and the lavon is the same in every little corner of the dough so when i cut it off it's truly representative of the whole mass so i i did the same mistake at the start then it would be just that either the dough or the ellie quad would rise faster than the other right well it does rise faster anyway because you're not constantly degassing it and strengthening it but it should rise at the same rate true makes sense yeah that makes sense you should be able to say something about the main dough based on the aliquato yeah yeah i think it's a i think it's a great method which also helped me to just see and also to everybody who just starts with baking and they don't know how raider sourdough really is it just helps to them to see and visualize whether there's any activity going on or not yeah absolutely so and one thing that i saw on your instagram is here this looks like a nice starter jar and there it says foolproof baking so are you working on your own starter jars now i am so we um we came up with i'm working with a man named matthew mento mcgregor and he had touched he had contacted me back last uh spring and he was like hey i've got this idea he's he was already selling something like this like a like a version one of this driver he was looking for a partner in crime to sort of jazz it up a little bit and maybe have a name behind it and um you know talk about this in in in a way that would help get it out there to people and help help them in their baking so yeah these starter jars are for micro feeding your starter so for people like me who use small so use like a ratio to feed your starter ones what's one one to five but using these very small volumes 5 grams 10 grams of starter it's kind of hard to tell sometimes where your starters rising in the jar tripling quadrupling doubling whatever it is so putting this ruler on the jar was the key feature that i've always i would literally hold a ruler up to my jar often like i would put that rubber band on the bottom i would hold the ruler up and i would do the mathematical calculation to see it's not it's not just because i'm a crazy person it's because i'm trying to track my starters activity and make sure it's just day after day if my starter is not going rising 3.4 x on you know day five even though day one through four it's been rising that amount i know something might be off so then that's the point yeah maybe the flower i mixed the rye into my bread flour not quite right or whatever it might be and it can still help me sort of narrow in on little details this is for crazy people we're crazy people because we're so other people think this is nuts they think it's yes but i love it yeah people sometimes comment on the youtube videos okay thank you very much i'm now off to the baker to buy my own bread thank you this was interesting but this is not for me yeah oh yeah totally oh and by the way um so we are just finished we just finished up printing of the new jars and today i got from the manufacturer a set of 10 samples so that i can run them through my dishwasher a bunch of times and scratch them with coins and like try to destroy them and do quality control checking so this is the new oh and so that's a small thermometer on them or what is that not like reverse for me it's hard to see is there a bed battery inside no batteries these are so cool and so nerdy um you find these these are like um found in aquariums okay they stick permanently uh they're like little stickers and they tell you the temperature and there's a lot of information in this little band so you get like a the green color tells you that the temperature is precisely at that temperature wow blue band tells you that the temperature is just a little above that value and actually if this is a little warmer in here you would start to see the 79 band show up and that would be tan color that tells you the temperature's a little bit below that temperature anyway and this this is dishwasher safe dishwasher safe that was key importance for for us can you still see me or am i frozen uh you're a little bit frozen but not um well yes now hello hello oh wait a second wait a second um now you are not there anymore can you still hear me though yes oh maybe just try maybe just try reloading the page once and then i think you should be back on your stream yes wow seriously impressive what kristen has done for the sourdough world and please also check out her instagram um account uh that's foolproof baking and also her youtube account and she is back hello again it's so weird you don't understand wi-fi but my son just walked past our router i don't know why sometimes it just kills the internet sorry about that i feel the tech is also still not a solved problem there's still always also when you're doing now that you have work from home and you have to do a conference call something never works right there's always something broken we were lucky when we moved into this rental we got uh fiber internet oh that's amazing so wonderful it is it is great there was a great question from another viewer that i wanted to ask you and i have been wondering the same and i'm gonna put that here on the screen mr person has asked what is the most important variable in achieving your perfect open chrome oh my goodness okay so what is perfect i mean what is what is open crumb can we get philosophy full of philosophical you know i what if you're making sandwich bread you don't want a crumb like this if you're making um bagels this would not be good so let's to just talk about a bread like it's like this is a different structure right um influenced by the inclusions i put in so if you put cocoa powder this is going to disrupt gluten bonds it's going to disrupt the way that the the loaf looks on the inside it's got oils that are coming from the chocolate so like this breaks down those those gluten wells you can't get the same crumb so perfect depending on the bread right so you want what i like is a properly fermented bread that's me is perfect when it when it's open all over you've got those microbes as as much as possible have you know evenly fermented that that dough and you get more or less evenness in the way that the yeast pumped out carbon dioxide um it has to have the right flavor i don't want it to be too sour so like the perfect open crumb i think is this is not a tangible thing okay this is a in theory you know a thing you can talk about open crumb but i think it very much depends on on the bake you want to make that day me personally that bread that you just showed the the higher whole grain one yes this one right that that to me is a perfect crumb and it comes down to ideally having the most active fast rising starter possible so you get a nice fast ferment on your dough without the dough breaking down due to you know enzymatic degradation and the starch is releasing too much sugar you won't get that gumminess into the loaf something like that and then you have flavor compounds um from you know protease activity and like it's just it's it's a bunch of things it's it's handling right so like handling that dough and making sure that it's given the amount of strength that it needs without going overboard and without making it too slack um so i like you know high hydration helps me because it keeps the dough extensible my coil folds are very strong so one coil fold imparts a lot of strength and structure into the dough so just managing that um baked bake okay i'm sorry it's not specific no that's i think it's actually it just answers and shows the complexity of you just have to find the perfect balance between all the different parameters to make the perfect sourdough right and then also what's the perfect sourdough it depends on what you want it's a personal question personal preference absolutely absolutely and yeah like you know a perfect crumb for 100 whole grain with bits of you know bran floating around in it is going to look a lot different than one made from 100 strong high protein flour they're just they're going to be different there's not you can't accomplish the same thing with with all of these different flowers yeah yeah kristen we have already been chatting for almost one and a half hours it feels like we've only been chatting for five minutes this has been so much incredible information this is i cannot believe it's been that long we could probably continue chatting the whole day on sourdough i guess i think you're right oh my goodness yeah this is this is a lot of fun really really cool experience thank you so much for dedicating the time and for answering all those questions i think you are inspiring many bakers all around the world and i think it's just such an amazing hobby to work on sourdough bread and that's really cool that you're doing this yes and i love to see what you're doing too it's so cool i love the experiments and i love nerdy bread bakers i think it's just it's the best isn't it yeah i think that's also why so many engineers like it because for sourdough you have a set of instructions it's something that you have to follow and it really makes a difference sometimes if you just increase one ingredient by five grams or so oh yeah you can't just eyeball it well at some point you can if you've baked 10 000 loaves or so probably then you can start eyeballing it but at the start you have to be very precise absolutely yeah and just play with it have fun you know you can just see what happens it's just one of those things where you know if you if you don't know what's going to happen just try it try it yeah it will be fun and i think we should be repeating this maybe in a year from now and just sharing what we have learned in the last year and probably we will think okay sardo is even more complicated than i thought oh yeah yeah of course there'll just be a million more questions to answer for yes so yeah thank you again and everybody please make sure to check out uh kristen's account on instagram and on youtube as well foolproof baking kristen thank you so much it has been such a pleasure thank you for having me this is great thank you so much

Channel: The Bread Code

Views: 102,700

Keywords: sourdough, sourdough bread, bread, food, fullproofbaking, kristen dennis, full proof baking, sourdough interview, sourdough starter, how to make sourdough, homemade sourdough

Id: 7sZsraQcti0

Length: 85min 58sec (5158 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 10 2021