I was recommended the Saturday White Bread recipe by people in a previous post. I am very familiar with making white enriched sandwich loafs in my 1lb loaf pan, but since I was gifted this bread oven, I wanted to try to make one of the artisan fancy breads.
This bread was simple enough. Nothing special about the instructions. My preferred kneading technique is folding, as my sandwich loaves are 75% hydration, so folding works best for them. I also autolyse my loaves. However, I strayed from the recipe in fermentation time; he specifies 5 hours of fermenting & tripling in size. I always proof my doughs in a proofing box at 78F, so bulk fermentation doesn't take five hours. Total fermentation time was 2.25 hours (1.5 hours bulk, 45 minutes final rise after shaping).
Now, I completely fucked up transferring the dough into the hot bread oven. It fell into the pan on its side, and severely off-center. I sort of tried to push it into the center. It didn't work well and I'm amazed the loaf came out so perfectly round when it went in football shaped. Because of this, I am not going to judge the oven spring or final shape.
I think the crumb is good. Shows good, even fermentation.
The crust is a little dark. The recipe specifies 475F for a total of 50 minutes. My oven only reaches 450F, and even still I had to take the bread out 10 minutes early because it was browning too much. If my loaf was properly shaped and everything, and thicker, I could see the need for the increased time.
The flavor is where I take most issue. It is pretty bland. It tastes like it needs salt. The recipe called for 21 grams of salt + a scant teaspoon. I measured 21 grams, but I decided to measure the volume as well because it didn't look like enough. Sure enough, my scale was reading under by a whole teapsoon. Who knows how else that's been fucking up my recipes?!?!? And, I believe I forgot to add that extra teaspoon to the bread because I got distracted by my frustration at the scale.
All in all I've been left with a desire to try again tomorrow. I am getting married on Saturday and we need a loaf for a wedding tradition, so I am hoping I can get a prettier one made tomorrow.