Has anybody had just an insanely tough time finding flour throughout this process? And bread flour? Forgettaboudit. Luckily nobody in my area has realized that our in-state flour mill is still open for business. Takes a few days for delivery, but still more timely and reliable than Instacart.
Anyhow. I made boules. Here's what they looked like throughout the process.
Here's the preferment, started the night before:
Here's after I mixed the preferment with the remaining ingredients (this is the autolyse, prior to kneading):
After kneading. I probably should have worked it over for another couple minutes, AEB those jagged edges. Usually with a good knead, you get a very smooth, elastic end product, which indicates good gluten development:
After second rise:
Shaped into boules:
Finished product. A Little uneven.
The crumb was a little finer than I wanted. Next time I plan on doing a higher hydration ratio. Very tasty though, and the finer crumb made for a perfectly serviceable sandwich platform.
Reason #462 that I'm looking forward to this whole pandemic thing being done: I want to be able to just go to the goddamn store and buy some goddamn flour like a normal modern person goddammit
I have made maybe seven loaves in the bread machine. I'm pretty much at "weekly." What I've discovered about flour is that the big box stores tend to have extremely uneven distribution. For example, Fred Meyer had zero eggs on Friday but on Saturday they had eggs sitting out unrefrigerated on pallets. I think our excuisitely efficient logistics chain has been shot to shit. Smaller grocery stores seem to experience the flood a lot less and mostly what I've noticed is the cheapest brands are gone but the more expensive brands remain. For example, there was no flour to be had last weekend (and no sugar, and no brown sugar) but there were maybe 50 lbs of premium bread flour on the top shelf where people were too cheap and lazy to reach up that high to pay that much. How are things going out there? We did five babies in 25 hours and things are nucking futz but it kinda looks like they aren't getting worse per se.
People took everything here. Kroger, TJ's, Meijer... flour is straight up gone at every price point. Cake flour, even. Who uses cake flour? Do you even know what you're buying? Do you know what that's going to do to your recipes? Things here are fine. Our governor did an incredible job of taking this seriously early in the game and then enacting incremental changes over the course of ten days to lessen the blow to quality of life. By all reliable accounts and metrics, it's made a difference. Our cases are still increasing across the state, but not exponentially. Our hospital is experiencing its projected peak right now, and we still have space in our ICU and inpatient areas. We'll see if that holds, but for the time being, it means we still have gowns, gloves and goggles. We're still recycling masks. The joke about ER nurses is that we don't generally give a shit about precautions, so the biggest change has been going from laughing in the face of certain C. Diff to sob choke actually having to gown up to see patients. About 75% of what we see now is rule-out COVID, given that it's presenting as everything from SOA to broad abdominal complaints. And for the most part, that's fine. But it gets scary when you have to deal with a critical. Going into the negative pressure rooms wearing the garb plus CAPR feels like diving into the hot zone. It's eerie. And then I go home and count out the days and look for symptoms. I was scared a month ago. I'm still scared, but now I'm used to being scared. So I've got that going for me. Humans are so resilient. We can get used to just about anything.
Yeah, hit or miss at our grocery stores. I still have whole wheat but I'm down to less than a pound of AP flour. I haven't gotten the hang of working with whole wheat dough yet. I made pretzels 2 weeks ago but forgot to post about it. I tried pita last week, but it wasn't quite pita. Was still a good vector for hummus.
Looks beautiful! Well done. When everyone was buying up toilet paper in February I bought a bunch of flour and yeast. I gave a bag of yeast to ecib in a trade for some of his weed-tincture. A good trade, btw. Thank you ecib. I asked my mother for my grandmothers bread recipe and was all set to make it last night. Then, I realized it calls for 4 cups of milk. That's a shit load of milk for a family that still has a kid that takes two bottles a day. I'd never have to go the grocery if it weren't for the milk and eggs. Question for you: What's your go-to sandwich?
Boy, I wish I had a fancier answer than grilled cheese, but that's about all we have at hand these days. I bought flour, too. What I didn't buy was bread flour. Rookie prepper move. How have you been???
There is nothing wrong with grilled cheese. If anything, it's the perfect sandwich to show off your bread. I love fresh bread with just some butter. How am I? I am alright all things considered. I am a bit of a hypochondriac to begin with, so I am constantly concerned that I have COVID-19. I'm convinced I may have had it already, but then.. who isn't? I have so many uncertainties in my life right now around work, housing etc. that it's a bit unnerving but then I am not alone here. The entire country is facing uncertainties. I was able to record the other night. That was nice. I am recording a podcast on the current situation and how it's impacting people. Would you care to participate? It would take you all of 10 minutes.
Man, bread and butter is the only right answer. I'd love to contribute. I'm down to just my phone as a recording rig, so it might sound janky.
Pm me your email address. It’s been a while. I’ll email over some questions. Your phone will be fine. Why no more recording gear though? What happened to all of it? I want to help, if you need it. You’re way too talented not to be making music. Pm me.
The flour situation is ridiculous. I can only imagine that some folks have purchased four "because they heard it was flying off the shelves" and after a batch of cookies or a failed loaf of bread - they'll go back to not using it again, and it will be wasted...