First Experience with Baking Bread

dpittard

Wow!  What a weekend!  I packed up my large and we headed off to the family lakehouse.  The Egg produced many great meals and I believe it spent more time above 200° than it did below 200° this weekend.

As the title suggests, I had my first bread baking experience on Sunday.  I smoked two butts and I wanted to try my hand at baking as well to really drive this meal home.  Since I attended ClayQ's class at the GA Mountain Eggfest 2 Saturdays ago where he demonstrated his Focaccia Bread, this seemed like a good first recipe.  I found his recipe on the other forums and followed it as closely as I could (timing ran a little long as the butts took a little longer than expected).

Overall, the bread turned out good and it disappeared faster than I could blink.  Don't ask about the duck tape...

During his presentation, ClayQ said that higher in the dome was better.  His presentation was more geared toward Egg owners with little to no accessories, so he was baking this at felt level.  I have an extra grate and some fire bricks, so I decided to go ahead and go higher in the dome based off his advice.  I found out quickly, though, that the outside formed a really good crust while the middle was still a little doughy.  So here's my main question: with baking, is higher in the dome always better?  If I do go higher in the dome, I'm guessing I should adjust my temps a little lower to allow the inside to bake at the same rate as the outside?

As a secondary question, my dough seemed to be a lot more spherical or domed that Clay's was during his presentation.  The recipe even says that this is normally a flat bread.  Should I have deflated the bread?  I'm under the assumption that the more bubbles, typically the better.

Thanks for looking, y'all!  This bread was so good that I think I'm doing another loaf this weekend!

CigarSmokinEgger

Great looking bread!

As for the questions, I would go lower height wise than temp.  I did a pizza last night and I think I got it too high in the dome due to the color on the rim of the crust, which is what you may have experienced.

I like a lot of spring in my dough, be it pizza or bread.  Not sure about focaccia specifically, but the more spring, the better the interior; at least in my experience.

Charlie tuna

Doughy in the middle seems like too much water in the dough, and it doesn't have to be much, or too high a cooking temperature, and again, your cooking temperature doesn't have to be off or too high very much.  The bread looks great to me!!  And mine cooks the same way -- flat !