How to proof bread with your Anova Precision Cooker

How to proof bread with your Anova Precision Cooker

Updated

People are baking bread. Have you seen this? Have you heard about this? Just kidding, everybody and their mother has taken to flexing their precious home-leavened loaves on the 'gram since quarantine started and flour became such a coveted ingredient among food nerds. So how can sous vide help you go full #yeastmode on your next loaf?!

Sometimes your house isn't as suitable for Anova oven proofing as you'd like it to be. Sure, you could try to use your oven proof setting, but you're looking at around 160°-180°F at the lowest. That's not proofing, that's slow cooking. If only there were a device in your kitchen that can hold a precise temperature...oh wait! We hooked up with #anovafoodnerd Mike Castaneda who is kind enough to walk us through his process for making bread at home with a sous vide assist

Bonus? Four real ingredients. No fillers. No nasty stuff. Just flour, water, salt, and yeast.

Anova Precision Oven Proofing: How We Do It

What you'll need (makes 1 loaf):

  • 500g flour
  • 360g water
  • 10g kosher salt
  • 2g instant yeast
  • 1 dutch oven with lid

Directions:

1. Set your Anova Precision® Cooker to 95°F / 35°C.

2. Measure out 360g water and add 2g of instant yeast. Transfer into a resealable ziplock. Place in 95°F / 35°C bath for the yeast to start working. This will take around 10-15 minutes.

3. While your yeast and water is working, in another bowl measure out 500g of flour and mix in 10g of kosher salt.

4. Once the yeast has activated (you'll see bubbles!) combine your water to your dry ingredients and mix well by hand until in a round shape, but still loose. Place in a glass bowl. It can look a little wet at first but we'll give it time to proof and will be adding a bit more flour later.

5. Set your Anova Sous Vide Precision Cooker to 80°F / 27°C, our optimal proofing temperature. You can add some cool water to bring temp down quicker if needed.

6. Float your bowl directly on top of the water bath. The weight of the dough will submerge the bowl a few inches, surrounding your dough with the perfect temp needed to proof! Proof 1-2 hours until dough doubles in size.

Time to bake!

1. Preheat your oven to 475°F / 250°C with dutch oven inside. Preheat for 30-45 minutes. You want your dutch oven to be very hot.

2. Remove dough from bowl, shape into a round loaf, adding small amounts of flour as needed to get into a nice shape.

3. Carefully remove dutch oven from oven, place bread dough in the dutch oven, put the lid on, and return to the oven to 30 minutes. At the 30 minute mark, remove the lid and bake for 15 more minutes until golden brown!

FAQ'S

What if I don’t have a scale to measure grams?

When baking, measuring by weight will help get repeatable consistent results, but here are some estimations of the ingredients by volume:
  • 4 cups of flour
  • 1.5 cups of water
  • 1.5 teaspoon kosher salt
  • .75 teaspoon instant yeast

Where does the bowl of dough go?

Float the bowl right on the surface of the water! The bowl will submerge a couple of inches from the weight of the dough, and be surrounded by the water.

Why does the dough seem REALLY wet?

This is a dough with a lot of water. If you find it hard to manage, add a small amount of flour (a few pinches at a time) until manageable.

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1 comment

To make bread awesomly quick bread dough is in the thermomix

Esther Sprigg

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