Are you using commercial yeast or sourdough starter as your leavening? And what is the moisture content of the bread you are making? Simply divide the grams of water used by the grams of flour.
I make sourdough bread with a fairly high moisture content in the loaf itself (70%) and bake it in a dutch oven, which develops a nice thick, crunchy crust. That does a pretty good job protecting the loaf, and I put the cut side down on the counter. That last a few days before the crust gets *really* hard, but the inside is still soft. Sometimes after a few days I'll put the loaf in a sealed container (pyrex bowl with a lid) and that softens the crust up enough to make cutting easier. I've heard of using bags like this <https://breadtopia.com/store/bamboo-bag-round/>, but have not felt the need to try them out. I am in Minnesota/Wisconsin and although it is usually drier in the winter, it is still far more humid than your climate. However you could try keeping the cut side down, making a loaf with a higher moisture content (especially since you are using whole wheat flour), and try building up the thickness of the crust. Mat Recently biked home with a wimpy 5 pounds of flour On Monday, April 27, 2020 at 4:58:27 PM UTC-5, Patrick Moore wrote: > > Mostly bread. I just baked another batch, whole wheat, bolus after > kneading but before baking was 54.6 oz. That made 2 moderately-sized > loaves, far more than I and my daughter can eat in the 1-2 days before > bread left out goes stale here in our dry climate. We eat flour tortillas > and rice and pasta and potatoes, too, so we don't eat bread daily. > > I've taken to freezing my bread after slicing it into more-or-less > sandwich-thick slices, the nuking it briefly, just long enough to soften > and not long enough to heat. I do something similar with tortillas, too; > tho' usually heat both sides on little grill over gas burner until soft or > heat on a cast iron griddle. > > But what do you others do to keep bread fresh? Again, dry climate. > > The freezing method works fine; the nuked results are near-fresh in > texture and taste. But I'm curious about other possibilities. > > Bike content" carried 15 lb of King Arthur stone ground "white" whole > wheat flour home on the bike, along with much else. Don't usually buy KA or > "white" whole wheat, but it was all left on the shelf at the time. > > -- > > ----------------------------------------------------------------------- > Patrick Moore > Alburquerque, Nuevo Mexico, Etats Unis d'Amerique, Orbis Terrarum > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "RBW Owners Bunch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to rbw-owners-bunch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/rbw-owners-bunch/fa4469ac-ce35-4467-a534-57c6af3736c4%40googlegroups.com.
