{"id":112,"date":"2013-07-19T17:12:39","date_gmt":"2013-07-20T00:12:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nybakersbench.com\/?p=112"},"modified":"2013-07-19T17:13:22","modified_gmt":"2013-07-20T00:13:22","slug":"guest-blog-temps-gone-wild","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nybakersbench.com\/?p=112","title":{"rendered":"Guest Blog: Temps Gone Wild"},"content":{"rendered":"

Paul McCool<\/strong> is a baker and teacher from Lawrence, Kansas, who’s been a long-time voice of reason on my favorite (well, second-favorite) bread site, thefreshloaf.com. Recently, he sent me this tale of what can happen (and indeed, has happened to me more than once) when one loses their focus during bake time. Fortunately, this cautionary tale also contains its own redemption. Lemonade, anyone? And many thanks, Paul.<\/em><\/p>\n

You’ll probably enjoy this.\u00a0 I have been preparing for another rye breads class this Friday which includes the Rustic Pumpernickel from Inside the Jewish Bakery<\/em><\/strong>.\u00a0 Since the class runs from 10:00-3:30, lunch is provided for the students.\u00a0 What I do is bake a batch of each of the breads being taught (this class also includes a Vort Limpa and Eric’s Fave Rye) in advance.\u00a0 This lets me give the students a visual of the finished breads and plenty of material for lunch-time sandwiches.<\/p>\n

Everything was going spectacularly well with the Rustic Pumpernickel this weekend.\u00a0 Fermentation, shaping, final rise, docking, steaming; I had it all together.\u00a0 Everything, that is, until I opened the oven to check the loaf’s temperature before calling it done.\u00a0 At that point I realized that I had missed the step which says to turn the oven temperature down from 470 to 300 after the final steaming.\u00a0 Oops!\u00a0 It spent the entire bake at 470!\u00a0 The loaf is a deep mahogany brown, with just the tiniest bit of charring along the edge of a natural ear where the top of the loaf fissured from oven spring.<\/p>\n

Instead of panicking, I brushed the loaf with a generous amount of boiling water, let it cool, then wrapped it in a towel for the next 30 hours or so, then bagged it in plastic.\u00a0 All the while I was kicking myself for having made such a bonehead mistake.\u00a0 Finally, I resolved to bake another but take this one along as an object lesson.<\/p>\n

Just for grins, I cut into the loaf last evening.\u00a0 The crust had softened from being in the plastic bag.\u00a0 The interior was moist and cool.\u00a0 The flavor!\u00a0 Oh, the flavor!\u00a0 It’s as good a rye as I have made in a long time.\u00a0 Lots of that weirdly good\u00a0earthy\/spicy combination inherent in the rye, a gently assertive tang (mostly lactic but some suggestion of acetic, too), hints of citrus.\u00a0 This is seriously good bread, in spite of my screw-up.\u00a0 Norm would probably give me a whack for messing up the bake but I think that he would love it, too.\u00a0 So, in case you or your students ever make the same mistake, know that all is not lost.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Paul McCool is a baker and teacher from Lawrence, Kansas, who’s been a long-time voice of reason on my favorite (well, second-favorite) bread site, thefreshloaf.com. Recently, he sent me this tale of what can happen (and indeed, has happened to … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-112","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nybakersbench.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nybakersbench.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nybakersbench.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nybakersbench.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nybakersbench.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=112"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/nybakersbench.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":114,"href":"https:\/\/nybakersbench.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112\/revisions\/114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nybakersbench.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nybakersbench.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nybakersbench.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}