Breads - Numbers 47-52: Finding My Way Okay Without a Digital Scale

I have so lost my mojo that these breads were made when snow was on the ground and not a blossom had poked through the soil. Now we're on the cusp of summer. I have still been making breads, just old recipes. In fact , this week I just made a 100 percent spelt with a 24-hour first rise and a tiny bit of sourdough culture. Nice.

By the last month or so before my bat mitzvah, which was a couple of weekends ago, I totally devoted myself to that effort and left the bread aside. Except for a Jennifer Lawrence moment on the steps, everything went well. I took a week off before starting to study again. Now I have to get back to bread and other projects. Finally, way beyond age 13, I am ready for eighth grade, which, as those from New York City will shake their heads in agreement, I skipped along with many others. I therefore have no knowledge of earth science. 

Bereft temporarily of a digital scale
After weeks of my mouth open and my eyes like a deer's facing a car's headlights, not knowing how to move, I figured that I had made breads before the digital scale entered my home and I could make breads until a fixed or a new scale crossed my threshold again. I used cups and teaspoons instead of grams, sometimes roughly calibrating weights to volume measurements, more educated guessing than anything else. 

Sometimes, getting lost is the best way to find one's way. We get so dependent on numbers and formulas that we fail - or I fail at least - to pay attention to the real details, in this case, the texture of the dough and how it acts. We think that if we use exact amounts given in recipes that no more mental energy need be expended. Sometimes poor results do not mean that a recipe is bad, but rather the baker or the cook should have focused on the dough or the dish as it emerges, rather than on precise numbers.

Maybe that's why I have become over time a cook who throws things in rather than measuring. By the time I get to bread #108, will I be using handfuls and pinches - perhaps weighing them for others - and feeling my way to good breads? I don't know, but I realize that setting aside the exact measurements that the digital scale provides, at least every once in a while, is a fruitful exercise for concentrating on moisture, texture and appearance.
 
One more confession: As these breads were made closer and closer to Passover, mid-super spring cleaning with the distraction of preparing for the holiday and travels, and a laundry dryer that broke in the midst of all that. (From an environmental standpoint, after weeks of air drying the laundry and it not being so bad, I should actually purchase an outdoor drying rack and use it during the summer.) I was so busy that the few seconds to take a photograph of dough or bread seemed too time consuming.

Spelt always good
You have to love spelt. It works at 100 percent of the flour or in a hodgepodge of flours one is using to rid one's household of opened flour bags. Breads # 51 and 52 included spelt flour, with the latter mostly spelt. Both came out great. 

Bread #51

Ingredients
1 cup starter (an unusually large amount for me)
1 1/4 cup white whole wheat flour (KAF)
1/4 cup spelt flour 
1/2 cup bread flour
1 1/2 tsp salt

Instructions
Mixed and let rest for 25 minutes. Kneaded and did a stretch and fold; all together that amounted to three minutes. Very sticky, so I added the 1/4 cup bread flour listed in the ingredients.

I let the dough rest for another 25 minutes. Since it remained quite sticky, I added approximately two tablespoons of bread flour (not listed in ingredients). I kneaded in the extra flour and did one more stretch and fold.

I did two more stretch and folds of intervals of 25 minutes. I then shaped the dough into a somewhat baguette form so that I could later bake in the oblong la cloche. I let the dough rise in a couche-like, baguette-forming contraption for four hours. Much anxiety that this was too long to have waited. 

Oven time
Preheated oven to 455 degrees for one hour. Heated the oven with the la cloche inside to make sure it was super hot, thus ready for the dough. At one hour, fearing maiming from placing the dough inside the ungodly hot la cloche, I opted instead to put the dough on parchment paper and place the parchment paper into the bottom of the oblong la cloche. Much easier and the bottom of the bread turned out just fine.

At 13 minutes, I reduced the temperature to 420 degrees and baked for another half hour, for a total of 43 minutes baking time. Beautiful! Way better than expected, lovely rustic-looking baguette. Solidly good taste. Husband happy that this shaped bread is much easier to cut than the boules.

Bread #52

Ingredients
1 3/4 cups water
1/4 cup starter
3 cups spelt flour
1 3/4 cups bread flour
2 tbsp. wheat bran
1 1/2 tsp salt

Instructions
Mixed all ingredients and did three stretch and folds, two at 30-minute intervals and the last at 15 minutes. Let the dough sit, covered in plastic, overnight for approximately 11 hours. I put the dough in the refrigerator for a few hours until ready to bake. (Seems that when the exactitude of the digital scale is gone, everything else goes somewhat approximate as well.)

I love being able to take the dough from the fridge, shape it (unless already pre-shaped) and plop it in the oven.

Baking
Preheat the oven to 500 degrees about an hour before baking. Preheated the oblong la cloche - both top and bottom - in the oven so it would be hot when dough placed inside.

I split the dough in half for two baguettes, rather squat ones that did not resemble the long thin professional ones sold at the local Whole Foods supermarket. I shaped each loaf and placed on parchment paper. Then I used a spousal gift that had been sitting in the pantry since way before the 108 breads project - a baguette shaper made of thin metal and full of tiny, presumably aerating, holes. Being of little faith, I used parchment paper over the metal.

One dough went immediately into the oven-heated oblong la cloche, while the other dough stayed in the shaper, but placed in the fridge until its turn with the oven.

Baked each baguette for 30 minutes, a good 12 to 15 minutes less than a boule would have needed. The taste was wonderful, a great and easy bread.

Breads #47 to #50
Forgettable is the operative word. I write down a couple of details just so I remember not to repeat these breads. I used vital wheat gluten in all of these recipes, so perhaps there is a lesson to be learned. Every other ingredient was pretty standard, which makes me think it was either that ingredient or the distractions of Passover cleanup and the upcoming bat mitzvah that led to edible, fine breads, though way short of spectacular.

These breads were #47, whole wheat; #48, combination of rye, whole wheat, and bread flour; and #49, white whole wheat and bread flour, the latter two with 1/4 cup each of flaxseeds as well. 

Nothing more need be said. Why give instructions for mediocrity? Almost at the halfway mark to 108, I prefer to spend the time proceeding to new breads and techniques.

Lesson from a scale lifetime warranty gone joyous

When I play solitaire, which I only do on vacation because I get lost in it, I always assume I will lose. When I applied for jobs or went on dates, I went in with the attitude that these were one-time meetings that would not bear fruit. There's a pessimism in my genetic makeup; I am thrilled when life works out otherwise. Beneath the pessimism, though, are superstition and hope; the dark attitude actually provides no protection.

Escali scales proved otherwise. Despite my waiting and losing hope, despite a snarky email, despite thinking all was lost even after I had sent the scale back to Minnesota to be fixed - because a few weeks is like an eternity in the Internet age - Escali shipped a new digital scale, explaining in a business form that the old scale was beyond repair.

 

People really are nice in Minnesota.

Shrieks heard round the block

I screamed with joy when the box with the new scale arrived and screeched with more happiness the next day when I told a friend at work who has been privy to the whole broken scale saga that the nice people of Minnesota are truly nice and not just in reputation and small talk at the airport.

The scale came to my door in the midst of Passover cleaning, after bread making had ceased. And it is Passover now, a holiday when one enjoys unleavened treats, a vacation from bread, so I have yet to try out the new scale. (I just did a bat mitzvah class talk on the whys and wherefores of the distinguishing bread from matzo. Very intriguing.)

Uplifting moral

Original moral of the story: Keep your receipts because no matter how many emails and how good a person you are, the company will not believe that you came by their product legally and under warranty - even lifetime warranty - protection unless you have the evidence to prove it.

Revised and actual moral of the story: Keep your receipts, but do not lose heart if you fail because you never know if there is an angel in Minnesota or elsewhere to give a hand or a new scale. Indeed, this can be true even if you send the company a snarky email that deserves to be met with a "screw you" response. Maybe all of that cold and snow, the sweaters and long underwear, the tea and hot soup, make for a kindness I was unfamiliar with while growing up in 60s New York City.

Almost posted

The following is the post I almost posted, literally with my finger poised over the "publish" button, but taken back to give just a brief moment of time before I sent this darkness out into the world. How right I was to hesitate. How wrong I was to have written these words.

Three strikes

I called the Escali scale company three times. The first time, they told me Yes!, you are certainly under warranty and fill out our online form. Form filled out, two weeks pass, no response and I called for a second time. The second time, like the chorus of a bad song, they told me Yes!, you are certainly under warranty and fill out our online form - and, get this, check your spam folder because our emails often end up there. Now that's a customer-friendly practice. I waited patiently yet again for my email response; I checked my inbox and my spam folders; I got distracted with work and travel and a few weeks later I called again. After all, people in Minnesota are nice, they go out of their way to help, right? I called a third time and the sweet young lady waited while she sent the email to me with the warranty information, received in my inbox on the spot; now all I had to do was read the warranty and mail my scale back.

Not so fast.

Turns out that when you receive a wonderful digital scale with a lifetime warranty there should be a giant warning that says in giant red letters: Keep your receipt. Do not ever throw it away or this lifetime warranty language will be meaningless, no matter how carefully you keep the box, the packaging, and the little leaflet that came with it and no matter how clean you keep the digital scale that you finally ordered after researching all of the options and no matter how much the lifetime warranty aspect of the deal figured into your selection.

Being in a snarky mood once I realized that the lifetime warranty was like a mathematical formula where you keep getting half way so that you never actually arrive at your destination, I wrote an email that demonstrated I was not born in Minnesota, but in a place where sarcasm and nastiness are somewhat appreciated. This will take years of meditation practice to make up from. [I get some credit for waiting to post this, but not much. Just to demonstrate the extent of my tantrum, the actual email to Escali follows.]
 

My email to Escali

Dear [Escali staff person name],

I spent a good part of the weekend looking for a proof of purchase for the P115C Escali scale I purchased about a year ago. I dove into the nether reaches of my Amazon and credit card accounts. I can't believe how much information is permanently stored, but alas I found nothing (my husband says I have no finding skills, but that usually refers to losing my glasses). I called King Arthur Flour to see if I actually purchased the scale through its catalogue as I had a purchase on my credit card from them at about the right time, assuming, of course, that I actually remembered when I bought the scale. Definitely after January 2013, but I would have to go through baking notes to get more specific. No, that King Arthur purchase, which I had forgotten, was a late holiday gift for a friend.

All I have is the scale and no proof of purchase other than the fact that since I did not receive it as a gift or steal it, the scale, now broken, is legally mine and unfit either for use or for repair. I have the original packaging, but alas, that is insufficient according to your warranty sheet.

The scale, when it worked, was marvelous, and a few weeks ago, when it broke, I was on the phone with a friend I had not spoken to in almost 25 years. No wonder, mid-dough preparation, I probably leaned on the bowl, which was sitting on the scale, a bit too much. After all, you talk to a high school friend and you act about as mature as you did in high school, which, in my case meant baking triumphs and accidents that will go unmentioned (except for the terrible peach pie made with peanut oil that said friend's mother took to an event, something that was forgiven, but certainly never to be forgotten).

I am tempted to send the scale to your company as it is presently of absolutely no use to me. I would like to send it for repair in accordance with the warranty, with your permission, of course. 

Otherwise, the scale will go into the garbage, I will purchase a scale from another company and I will likely write a snarky blog post on my bread blog about my sad scale warranty story. Really, I would much prefer that Escali live up to the warranty and fix my hitherto wonderful scale.

I await your response.

Thank you, 

Signed me [my name here]

Say it ain't so
Embarrassed to say this, but it was such a good scale that I [was] actually considering buying a second one (comparing it to some others) and this time placing the receipt in a safe place like a safe deposit box or in the box with the scale so that I am sure every time I use it that if something goes wrong, I will be able to ship it to Minnesota to be fixed. And by the way, escali means scale in Esperanto, according to the company website. Esperanto is a language that was somewhat promoted by Yiddish speakers and called a world-wide Yiddish, a culture that would appreciate a snarky email.

Don't you know
No response, not even in my spam folder, until three weeks later, a lovely Minnesota email. Those people are so nice, they melted my native New Yorker heart. This Wednesday, after Passover is over and I put away the holiday pots and pans, counter covers, and all manner of stuff I store in the basement for this one week a year, and take out of the pantry the toaster, the bread box, the bread cutting board and other accoutrements of everyday life, I will, with some trepidation, turn on the new scale. Right after, I will run downstairs to the freezer basement and defrost my sourdough starter, which will take about a week to be made ready to raise a bread. I can't wait to mix a dough with the new scale and smile with the thought that it is a scale that means kindness in any language.