Experiments in Bread Making, Trial 6

See the previous experiments:
Experiment 3 - First Time With a Poolish
Experiment 4 - Poolish and Simplified Recipe
Experiment 5 - Poolish, Improved Simple Recipe, and Improved Flour

Experiment 5 resulted in a loaf of bread that had great flavor, was bigger than 4, but still a tad too small.  I realized that we weren't kneading the dough enough, and thought that might be part of the problem.  The following recipe is adapted from the Lehi Roller Mills package, doubled, to allow for a poolish.  This time, I kept the whole process in the KitchenAid bowl.

2 c warm water
1 tsp yeast
2 1/2 c flour

Mix well with hands, cover, and ferment overnight in refrigerator.

Poolish after 24 hours.

Mix in:
2 tsp salt
4 tbs sugar
3 1/2 c flour, 1/2 cup at a time, until dough cleans the bowl and is sticky.  Kneed/mix the dough on speed 1 for about 10 minutes, stopping to turn the dough as necessary.  When the dough is properly kneaded, you should be able to pull it into a thin even layer, thin enough for light to shine through without it ripping.

Dough, immediately following "kneading"

Cover, and rise in a warm place until dough is soft enough to leave an indent when you press on it with your finger, about 1 hr.  Knead in KitchenAid, at speed 1, for about 60 seconds.  This punches down the dough, releasing the trapped gas, and redistributes the starch and sugar in the dough so that the yeast has a fresh supply of food.

Dough, after rising for 1 hour.

Shape, cover, and let rise in a warm place.  One loaf was rolled with roasted garlic and rosemary.

To bake, first steam the dough by having a pan of water in the bottom of your 350 F preheated oven.  Steaming allows for better expansion on baking, and a browner crust.  Remove the water after 15 minutes of baking time.  This bread was baked at 350 F for 25 minutes.

My loaf, right, stuck to the bowl I had covered it with... resulting
in the grotesque partially deflated thing you see here

These loafs again tasted fantastic (especially the garlic/rosemary), and again didn't expand much at all in the oven.  On the garlic loaf, we didn't score the top deep enough.  The regular loaf wasn't scored at all.  But, I don't think that is the cause of faulty oven expansion.  My official prognosis, after reading a book on bread science, is that my poolish adaptation is bad.  Either I need to add less yeast to the poolish, and more yeast when I mix the poolish with the other ingredients OR the amount of yeast is fine... but they run out of food by the time the second rise is complete.

"Bread Science, the chemistry and craft of making bread" by Emily Buehler is a fantastic read if you, like me, are wanting to both learn how to make bread and the science behind why you make it that way.  I plan on writing a review in the upcoming weeks.  In the mean time, I plan on trying out some of the techniques I read about in experiment 7.