Category Archives: Bread

Folding and Scaling Dough for Bialys

This was supposed to be in the bialys post, only I can’t seem to add it there. So I’ll just post it here in case anyone want to see how to fold dough, folding dough is one of the best tricks I have learnt about making bread and I like doing it, it’s a gentle considered process that has a magic effect on the dough, much better than thumping the dough up and down on the worktop. No one really needs to do that. Folding helps tighten and strengthen a very wet dough, evens out the temperature throughout the dough so that the whole mass develops evenly and if you do it very gently, helps to stretch and form lots of wonderful bubbles to give you a well aerated dough that a machine simply can’t achieve for you. You don’t have to fold, but it helps!

The second set of photos is using a 100% function on a KD 8000 set of scales to get the dough pieces the same size.

The idea is that you can divide your dough up into equal pieces without having to do lots of sums. So say you want 4 pieces of dough of equal size. You put your bowl on the scales. Zero the scales. Add the dough. Then press the magic 100% button. The number on the scales changes to 100. Take the dough out. Number goes to 0 again. Then cut the dough up. Each piece should be….. 25%. That’s it. So this works best for numbers that go into 100 easily, like 2, 3, 4, 5 and 10, but it will work with 12 as in the example in the slide show.

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Bialys for Mellow Bakers

Teaser….

A quick bialy post for Mellow Bakers, last one of the month; we’ve had French bread and a very serious rye and this is the fun one, so I saved it to now.

Some of the other Mellow Bakers who have made these so far:

Natashya at KitchenPuppies
Paul at Yumarama,
 Steve at Burntloafer

I read what the Mellow Bakers who have made them already had to say about using raw onion and breadcrumbs, and the consensus seems to be that they didn’t like them,  so for these I sweated some chopped white onion in a spoon of butter for about twenty minutes till sweet and golden and then added them to some Polish breadcrumbs I found in the cupboard. Don’t ask me what they were doing there, I think I went out to get Panko and came home with these one day.

The extremes I go to….

Made dough, folded dough, proved dough, then scaled dough into 12 pieces. Shaped dough into tight rolls and left on trays. Links to recipes elsewhere on the net below if you need one.

Looks organized doesn’t it?

Forewarned about the tendency of these rolls to spring back to life like some mad Bouncy Castle and either ping their toppings off, or engulf them, I left the rounded doughs for a lot longer than Mr Hamelman advises (well, I like to pretend that I did this on purpose but as you who know me might realise, I forgot about them)  and the dough was well and truly proofed and starting to stick together by the time I remembered again.

Fully proved

The good part was that the dough was pretty tired by the time I got back to it, so it was really easy to make the flat middle bit….

shaping the flat bits

And then, Dear Reader, I filled ’em and baked ’em, they don’t take long in a good hot oven, and out they came. Looking golden and smelling of hot onions….

….but they are chewy,  I think they are supposed to be. Sort of thing to keep you occupied as you wander through New York City early in the morning on your way to work, chewy because who wants crumbs down their work clothes, chewy, well just because…..they are

BIALYS!

Where is no 12?

Recipes for bialys on line if you want to have a go….Here’s one done in cups.   If you want Mr Hamelman’s version you might have to get the book, but it is apparently a standard sort of recipe.

PS  I’ve just looked them up on Wiki which says they are named after Bialystok, a city in Poland, so my breadcrumbs are appropriate which is a bit spooky.

Have another one ! Don’t mind if I do….