BREAD baking

[BleeckerSt_Girl]

and Hi Lisa,
I guess I'm doing something wrong because it gets moldy after two days I wonder if it has to do with all that extra water in the dough and not allowing it to escape when I'm cooling it off on a cooling rack.
After you finish baking yours and comes straight out of the oven, what do you do??

If I try to bake my dough at 400+ F, the crust would get burnt black. I have a convection oven where the fan can not be turned off. I bake mine at 375 for about 10 minutes then drop the temp down to 325 then down to 275. Maybe I still have wayyy too much moisture in the bread.

Cat-
when my bread comes out of the oven I just let it sit on a cooling rack. Sometimes we eat some after 3o minutes or so. I leave it out open until we go to bed, then I just loosely put it in a plastic supermarket bag, loose and not airtight, and that's how it stays on the counter til it's eaten. Perhaps if you are keeping it in an airtight plastic bag this encourages mold. That's why old fashioned tin bread boxes had little holes on the sides- bread needs a bit a of air circulation to avoid spoiling, I think. Same technique applies to storing lettuce and veggies in the fridge- leave a bit of an opening in it's container and it will stay fresh longer than if you seal the tupperware or plastic bag completely.

Aside from that though, your oven temps sound less than ideal and I'm sure you would do better if you were able to bake your bread more 'normally' at +/- the 450F range. Are you sure you have it set for bake (not broil) and your bread is centered in the oven? I don't know why your crust would burn black at 400F- something doesn't sound quite right there. Perhaps get an oven thermometer at the store and check to see if the settings are really accurate. I know my 1970's oven runs 50 degrees hotter than what the dial 'says' it's set for. So when i set the dial to bake at 400, the oven is actually 450 degrees. I found that out when i bought a thermometer to check it- I was glad to know that, I always suspected it was runnning a bit hotter than what I set it for.

If any of you use the Artisan Brad 5 Minutes a Day technique, then you can use any of the doughs to make a quick Indian flat bread, Naan:
http://www.artisanbreadinfive.com/?p=582
I made it once and it was VERY delicious and VERY easy. I used a piece of the usual white boule basic dough to make it. Trouble was, it was pretty buttery and tasted so good we ate it all up immediately and felt like we used up our entire day's calories and fat at once!