Looking Out To Sea

In short, this evening has been an excellent evening for breadmaking. I am very pleased with what I produced today. Some notes:

• Rolling dough is a mug’s game. Don’t try to make perfect cylinders by rolling. Fold the dough onto itself lengthways repeatedly to get the length you need. This gives a much more even result. (You can still roll to smooth things out, but don’t try to apply pressure to make your dough longer. The dough will resist.)
• Loading an uncooked, unsupported loaf onto a tray/peel and then sliding it off that into the oven… sounds dangerous and a great way of turning your carefully sculptured dough into a pile of mush. But it really does work. The trick is the light dusting of semolina on your peel before loading on the dough. Then it slides beautifully.
• Quick slashes, slow slashes. Doesn’t seem to make much of a difference as long as you don’t make a mess of the dough when you do it.

• Using a little water sprayer seems to work (£1.50 from the shop across the road). But you can never have enough steam, I think.
• Cooking hot is good. Especially if you’re opening the oven wide to load and spray the insides. I tend to forget about reducing the temperature once the oven’s been preheated and it hasn’t really harmed my breads.
• Get a large enough container to put them in, otherwise you’ll feel like a right doofus. Or eager mouths to feed, of course.