First Bread Recommendation

[fuzzydaddy]

Ok, I've been inspired to cook my first bread. I have a large BGE and a 26" Webber Kettle. I've been all butts, ribs, and fowl since joining last November (which is when I really began knowing what I'm doing with great results - thanks everyone). So I'm looking for recommendations for my first bread and would appreciate your suggestions...with recipe or link to a recipe. Thanks in advance!

[Huskee]

Two words, Wart Face. Or one word Breadhead.

[fuzzydaddy]

Breadhead is who inspired me. Me thinks he is excellent at bread.

[Steve Vojtek]

I concur he inspired me as well I just wish my sourdough starter would make up it's mind already ... still going through the 'stall' but I'm patiently waitin and feeding - not hard at all just a few minutes every day.. Breadhead is the one.

[fuzzydaddy]

I know zero about making bread so I'll need grill setup recommendations too.

[Steve Vojtek]

The only bread i've made is in my bread maker with commercial yeast - good bread but not great. Sourdough is better. I wish i could but i can't advise you on your grill recommendations as i myself will be learning all that soon. Hopefully Wartface can help.
I've had really good sourdough bread though and there's nothing better - and that's what i'd like to replicate at home...It really is worth the small effort required...IMO

[Breadhead]

Steve... Patience my friend. Your starter is in the Stall and there is a whole lot of activity going on inside. The 2 bacteria are fighting for position and they are not producing Co2 or alcohol at this time. In a few days you will wake up and check your starter and it will be very bubbly and active. When that happens do the float test. Get a small cup of water and a teaspoon. Dip the teaspoon in the water, scoop out some starter and drop it in the water. If it floats you are ready to bake some bread.

[W.A.]

Easy bread. Need to get alot of humidity though. Not sure how to do that with a grill

http://www.kingarthurflour.com/recipes/hearth-bread-recipe#reviews

[Breadhead]

Creating steam inside a grill or smoker. Pre-heat you grill, baking stone/pizza stone and a stainless steel mixing bowl to whatever temp you are going to bake your bread at. Once you're ready to put your dough on the stone use a misting squeeze bottle to mist it with water. Remove the stainless steel bowl, put your dough on the stone and cover it with the mixing bowl to trap the steam. Leave the bowl over the dough for half of the baking time. I bake Ciabatta bread for 15 minutes and sourdough for 30/35 minutes or until the internal temp is 205 degrees. A Thermapen is handy for bread too.

See steel bowl set up in picture below.

[Breadhead]

Wartface aka Breadhead... Is here to help aspiring breadhead's. I will walk you through the sourdough process completely.

However I just finished smoking 15 pounds of pork butt for a friend and they are arriving soon to pick it up.

I'll reply to this thread in great detail later today.

[Breadhead]

Fuzzy... I'm here to help! A large BGE is what I use to bake my bread. It really is better than your kitchen oven for bread. It's more like a a brick oven and the airflow is a positive. Wood fired brick oven's require similar airflow. Here's my setup. I elevate the pizza stone above the felt line. I put the pizza stone on and then mount a stainless steel mixing bowl on top of the stone. The mixing bowl is used to create and trap the steam inside the bowl. That will assist your dough to achieve maximum oven spring. I preheat the BGE, pizza stone and bowl to 600 degrees. Then when I put the dough on I reduce the heat to 550°. The gauge on your BGE says 550° but your dome is only about 500/515° actually.


To learn sourdough bread I highly recommend that you get a proven recipe and make the exact same recipe/dough over and over again. Repetition and knowing exactly how the dough is supposed to feel and how it's suppose to look at each step of its development is the key to learning to bake bread.

I also recommend that you do this all by hand until you fully understand the process. You can use a stand mixer to make some steps easier after you know how the dough is supposed to look and feel.

Sourdough recipe's are a dime a dozen. They do not vary much. They all require high gluten content bread flour. I use King Arthur Bread flour. They all have 66.6% to 75% hydration, that's the amount of water based on the weight of the flour. They all have 1.5% to 2% salt content based on the weight of the flour. You can chose to use very little sourdough starter which will require a long fermenting process or you can use lots of starter to speed up the process.

Technique at each step of the bread making process is what makes famous bread maker's famous, not their recipes. Mixing, kneading, ferment, shaping, final proofing, scoring/docking, baking and maximizing oven spring are what they have mastered.

Here's the recipe I learned with and I still use. I've learned the baker's percentage in the process that allows me to manipulate this recipe at will. Sometimes I only use 25 grams of starter to intensionally slow down the fermentation process to get a better loaf of bread. Bread is like BBQ... Low yeast and slow fermentation produces the best bread.

https://app.box.com/s/lror2opdvyjbw1haamr52mn167zvriei

[fuzzydaddy]

Thank you Breadhead. I'll copy to an Evernote and get started when time allows. I really appreciate you sharing. this will be a big help.

[Breadhead]

For all of you backyard Pit Master's that are looking for something to do during your looooong low and slow cooks other than mowing the lawn, washing the car and diligently keeping your "Honey do" list up to date. You might want to learn how to bake bread on your grill, smoker, ceramic oven or even indoors.

Baking bread is not nearly as difficult as you think it is. Remember... ALL bread was sourdough bread for 1000's of years. Active dry yeast was not engineered until recently in terms of how long people have been baking bread.

Back in the day when sourdough bread baking was being passed from family to family they didn't have ceramic ovens or the fancy steam injected professional ovens we have today. They had their fireplace and brick wood fired ovens. They did it caveman style.

Baking bread is science and technique... Plain and simple. It's not nearly as difficult as people think it is. I NEVER considered baking ANYTHING until I was 60 years old.

Here's 2 video's... Watch the first one once. Do exactly what it says.

Watch the second one 3 times... And in 1 to 2 months you will be a pretty good baker of sourdough bread.

My lips to your ears, it's this easy!

Video #1... http://stellaculinary.com/podcasts/v...r-video-recipe

Note: Chef Jacob is a professional baker that bakes many loaves of bread everyday in a wood fired brick oven. He needs lots of active starter on hand at all times. You on the other hand are going to bake 1 or 2 loaves a week while you are learning. I suggest you mix together 50 grams of bread flour, 50 grams of Whole Wheat flour and 100 grams of water. Then follow his instructions diligently and you will have all of the starter you need. Also note that if you need twice as much starter tomorrow than you have now... Feed it 100 grams of bread flour, 100 grams of Whole Wheat flour and 200 grams of water and in 4 to 6 hours you will have doubled you starter.

Video #2... http://stellaculinary.com/podcasts/v...d-video-recipe

Note: The Cast Iron baking technique is very good. I use that method sometimes indoors. I've even done it on my BGE however I prefer the pizza stone and mixing bowl technique on the BGE. That's just me though. Try both and see what works best for you.

Happy baking my friends.