Thank you for your lovely message, and how exciting that your sourdough is ready for its first Pain Naturel!

Baking the bread in an enameled cast-iron cocotte is a very good method. Because the cocotte traps the moisture released by the dough, you do not need to add an extra pan of water to the oven.

And yes, you can certainly open the oven and lift the lid toward the end of the baking time to check the bread. Bread is much less sensitive to this than a cake. By that stage, the structure of the loaf has already set, so briefly opening the oven will not make it collapse.

In fact, the lid is normally removed for the second halve of the bake so the crust can brown and become crisp. If you feel the bread is becoming too dark, you can always shorten the baking time a little or lower the temperature for the final stage.

Try not to open the oven unnecessarily during the first part of the bake, when the bread is still getting its oven spring, but later on it is absolutely fine to take a quick look.

Enjoy your first loaf, and we hope it turns out beautifully!

I have a regular electric oven that I use for all purposes, and I will bake my bread in an enameled cast iron (similar to Le Creuset cocotte). I do not plan to add a metal pot containing water in my oven.

I was wondering if we can open the oven door and lift the cocotte’s cover toward the end of the cooking period to see if the bread is about to be burning or if it looks great.

Is bread acting like a cake and getting killed if the door is opened before the end of the cooking ?

Hello Itsik,
Thank you for your very kind comment and excellent ‘2 cents’. We very much appreciate it. And also thank you for the tiny gap suggestion. It is something we have not yet tried, but really want to experiment with.

Enjoy your croissant making and baking!

Hello Michele,
We would consider three things:
1.First, if you’re waiting 10–12 hours, you’re potentially mixing the final dough with a preferment that has already peaked (as you say within 5 hours), exhausted much of its food, acidified considerably, and begun declining. So try to use your preferment at peak or just before.
2.We have experienced poor results ourselves with certain flour types and brands. So if the first suggestion is not the solution, we would also look at the bread flour in the final dough and change it.
3.Another culprit could be accidentally using too much salt or introducing water that is too hot, damaging the yeast.

We hope our suggestion are helpful and you will have an excellent loaf with your next bake.

Greetings,
Ed & Marieke

My 2 cents:
1. Prepare the entire or double quantity. If not enough space for rolling, just cut the dough in half (mentioned above in the comments).

2. Work with a measuring tape and a ruler/any long straight object – the aesthetics will make a difference.

3. When laminating, don’t just fold the dough (and create closed ends between other layers), but cut the dough precisely after measuring, and place the dough sheets on top of each other.
Make sure to cut and remove the closed ends every time as necessary.
The cutting can also be done after the refrigeration period – so that the butter near the edges will no harden (more exposed to cold air).

It’s a bit harder but worth the effort – much better layering.

4. Some chefs start rolling each piece with a tiny gap – which should allow expansion in the center of the croissant instead of having condensed layers. Play with it for your best results according to room conditions (too much gap might allow them to lose height).

Hallo Laura,
Kan gebeuren. Ja beste in de koelkast en op tijd er weer uit halen. Of anders deze voor iets anders gebruiken en een nieuwe maken.

Succes ermee en geniet van de pizza’s!

stom, de koffie nog niet op en om 10.00 sochtends het voordeeg klaar met actieve starter.. Kan ik het voordeeg koel wegzetten om vanavond het voordeeg op temperatuur te laten komen zodat ik morgenochtend het hoofddeeg kan maken volgens recept? OF heb je andere tips? Bedankt hoor! Ben benieuwd! 🙂

Hello Faith,
If you do not consume them in one or two days, we would advice to store them in the freezer in an airtight container. Get them out 30-60 minutes before you want to eat or present them. This works best for us.

Enjoy your baking

Hallo Elizabeth,
Dank voor je enthousiaste comment, dat waarderen we heel erg. Wij maken al een tijdje geen nieuwsbrief, dus je moet het een beetje doen met de recepten op de site.
We zijn met Weekend Bakery gestart in 2010 als Engelstalige blog over bakken, vandaar dat veel informatie in het Engels is. Contact met bakkers in andere landen was fantastisch, omdat er in andere landen veel meer interessants gebeurde dan in Nederland.

Een deel van onze recepten hebben we ook in het Nederlands vertaald:
www.weekendbakery.com/posts...tegory/nl/
Toen we begonnen, leken we wel bijna de enige in Nederland met informatie over (brood) bakken, maar nu is er zoveel te vinden en zijn er zulke geweldige bakkers dat het bijna overweldigend is.
We hebben natuurlijk wel de nodige kennis en ervaring, dus vraag gerust als iets niet duidelijk is over een recept bijvoorbeeld.

Enjoy your baking!
Ed & Marieke

Wat een prachtige website !!

Dolgraag zou ik jullie nieuwsbrief willen ontvangen,zoete lekkernijen.
Kon geen andere manier vinden , vandaar deze poging.
Met dank als dit gerealiseerd kan worden !!!!!

Hartelijke groet Elizabeth

Thank you Barry,
Over here we use semolina / semola as an addition but never alone when it comes to making pizza dough. I don’t know if they sell something like the Caputo brand flour in the US? It’s pizza flour is really good. The things to look out when buying pizza flour are the the type (look for tipo 00 italian flour) protein content and the W-value. The W-value (dough strength index) measures a dough’s resistance to stretching in a standardised alveograph test. The higher the value, the stronger the gluten network and the longer the dough can ferment without structural failure.

Tipo 00 (Italian): Very finely milled, high yield, classic for Neapolitan. W-value varies widely by manufacturer – from W 220 (unsuitable) to W 400 (Manitoba class). The type only describes milling fineness, not strength.

We will update our info on the subject too.

Enjoy your baking!

Hello Julie,
Thank you for sharing, that sounds wonderful with the added seeds too. We also make this loaf on a regular basis, sometimes adding just a hint of whole rye for some extra fiber, but seeds will do this job even better.

Enjoy your baking

Hi Meagan,
We think the protein content of the bread flour is around 12% if information is correct. This would mean your flour has enough protein to build a good gluten network to get a nice loaf of bread. The fact that you cannot properly stretch the dough we would now guess to be temperature and hydration related. So make sure the dough has the right temperature as stated in the recipe. You can also try to add more water (5 to 10%) to compensate for the use of American flour compared to our European flour. Hope with your next loaf, you will see improvement.

Best of luck with it

Hello Kailyn,
12 hours at room temp (20-21 C) does not equal 24 hours in the fridge for a proper development of the poolish / preferment. The fridge is too cold. One of the best options would be to reduce the amount of sourdough culture from 15 to 8 grams. Another option is to use a combination of initial room temp to kick start and then fridge time for the remainder when you are not there.

But for a bake to be successful, especially with a new recipe, we would always advice to try this when you have the propper time and attention, because there will always be adjustments needed to make a recipe your own.

Best of luck with it and enjoy your sourdough baking

The All Purpose whole wheat is 13.3%. The other’s I purchased bulk, so I don’t know.