Recipes

This webpage is an ongoing list of recipes: annotated, simplified and often modified. I have tested and like the results of all of these recipes. All photos are of the specific recipe taken by me.

Index

• Bread
• Roasting Coffee with a SR800

• 400g bread flour
• 300g warm water (~120f)
• 8g diamond kosher salt
• 3g instant yeast from freezer
• 1/8tsp (a few drops) white vinegar

1. Day 1: Take out a large and medium bowl. In large bowl, combine dry ingredients and mix by hand for a few seconds.
2. Add water and vinegar and mix until fairly homogeneous (not more than 1 minute or 2). Seal with medium bowl (covering dough) and let rest for 20 minutes
3. Dip fingers in water if needed to avoid sticking, pinch a side, stretch out slightly and fold inward. Repeat 5 or so times working around the dough. Finally, flip dough so top is on bottom and replace medium bowl as lid
4. Repeat step 3 once every 15-25 minutes, for 2-3 hours.
5. Once 2-3 hours is completed and dough is supple, solid and not that sticky, refrigerate for 6-18 hours with lid on.

1. Day 2: Remove dough in large bowl with lid from refrigerator. Leaving lid on, let warm up for 1 hour.
2. After warmed up 1 hour, punch and poke dough until as much air as possible is removed.
3. Pull 5 points around dough at edges one at a time, to the center point to shape dough into its final form.
4. In a bowl with a heavily floured towel, place the dough folded side down into the towel. Then cover the dough in the floured towel with something to keep it from drying out (e.g. a flat baking sheet) let dough rise for 2 hours.
5. Right after folding the bread (with 2 hours left) set oven to 440 and put a covered dutch oven in it to preheat.
6. After 2 hours, once bread looks a bit raised, transfer to parchment paper lined baking sheet by placing the baking sheet over the bowl then flipping the whole thing
7. Remove lid from dutch oven, with oven mits lower bread with parchment into the dutch oven. Replace lid. Cook for 27 minutes.
8. Remove rid and cook for another 7 minutes or until you like the color of the bed

• I think this is about the best bread you could hope to make in your kitchen. It has a chewy, crunchy crust and a moist flavorful crumb. Simple, yet complex if you eat it mindfully. Baguette like.
• If its your everyday bread it works well if you cut it into slices and freeze them for later individual use.
• There are no preservatives here, so it's only optimal for a day or so after baking. You can add preservatives to make it last longer without freezing.
• This is a hybrid of a Lopez-Alt and Lahey recipe. I basically memorized it, did it 100+ times over years, then re-wrote the recipe from memory.
• Lopez-Alts NYT version is almost 5000 words. I tried to be a little more focused and concise.

• 215-220g green coffee

1. Ventilate area with fan, be aware of smoke alarms which may be easily triggered
2. Measure beans (215-220g)on scale in vessel that pours well, preheat SB800 to 390-400f (fan around 3, heat around 9)
3. Once preheated, add beans, set fan speed to 8 or 9, set heat to 3 or 4. Start stopwatch. Watch temperature, it should land around 320 or 330—adjusting as necessary.
4. When beans turn beige (very little green left, should happen after about 3 minutes) set fan to 7 and set power to 8. Temperature should land between 370 and 380—adjusting as needed to get within that range.
5. After 3 minutes and light brown, increase power to 9 and decrease fan to 6 to get temperature around 400f. When stopwatch is around minute 6.5 to 7 you should hear beans popping.
6. Cook at 400-420f for about 2 to 2.5 minutes after popping starts to get light-medium roast.
7. Put fan at 9, power at 1 and put in SR800 in cooldown mode
8. Transfer to quart-sized mason jar and label. 2 batches of 217g coffeee should fill a quart jar to the top. Use a jar with a pin-hole in the lid to allow degassing for a few days before replacing with an airtight lid.

• The power and fan levels necessary for each stage are very subjective—it depends on the temperature of the room, the voltage of your outlet and the mileage on your SR800. The original guidelines I made for myself now wouldn't get the beans hot enough. It's inadvisable to trust instructions that are just fan levels, heat levels and time.
• The built in thermometer should also be treated with a degree of skepticism. If first crack is early or late adjust the handycap you give the thermometer.
• If you get uneven roasts (light and dark beans) try doing smaller batches or buying a longer tube.
• While I've roasted hundreds of batches of offee with it, I'm not sure if I would recommend the SR800 to others. It requires a lot of attention, time and judgement calls. I haven't tried anything besides it yet.