Ilya Flyamer's blog

My grandma every year makes yeasted homentaschen poppy seed pies, and they are delicious. Last year I asked her for the recipe, and made them myself, and it worked great, despite having no prior experience with yeast myself back then.

Since starting bread baking, I wanted to convert it to sourdough, and since I am now maintaining a stiff starter for ciabattas, which is great for enriched dough, I thought this was the right time. I converted all the measurements to grams from cups, and measured how much flour it took for me to reach the right consistency (since the instruction was to add however much flour it takes, "until the dough can hold its shape, but still soft"). Here is the scaled down version I used now, from the original recipe based on 1 litre of milk: https://fgbc.dk/108f

I built the levain fo this bake from 5 g of refrigerated starter over two feedings, and on the second one it at least tripled.

The process is as follows:

Combine milk, butter, oil, sugar and a pinch of salt in a sauce pan, and heat up until butter and sugar dissolve. Making sure the liquid is not too hot, combine with the starter and homogenize (I used a hand mixer). Then start adding the flour, until "the dough can hold its shape, but still soft", which was the specified in the formula amount for me. Then in the original yeasted recipe it is left to double, and punched down, and that is repeated a couple of times. Instead, I developed the gluten a little with 50 slap&folds, and then left it untouched until significantly risen, around 30%, took 3 hrs for me (no aliquot jar, just in a rectangular container, so very approximate estimate). Then, since it's not the season for homentaschen, I simply made a roll with the poppy seed filling (let me know if you want the recipe for that, but it's not just poppy seeds, much better than that). Rolled out the dough with a rolling pin into ~0.5 cm thick rectangle. Then spread the filling and rolled it up carefully, being quite tight with it. Next time I would split it into two logs, since this one was super long - it barely fit into my biggest baking tray diagonally! Or a shorter, but thicker one.

Then I proofed it until visibly grown, around 1-1.5 hrs. In the final 15 min preheated the oven to 180°C. Then made an egg wash (one egg, a splash of milk, and a little sugar), and covered the whole roll with it. Then sprinkled some poppy seeds on top for decoration, and covered with another layer of egg wash. Then baked in 180°C oven until beautiful outside, took 45-50 minutes.

Here it is cooling down after baking, and doesn't fit on the cooling rack:

And here is a slice across:

I think next time I'll use 1/4-1/3 of the dough for some cinnamon rolls, and will also be more careful to roll it evenly. Also should have let the filling warm up before using, there is clearly a thin layer of dough that is a little dense right next to it, and I guess it's because it cooled down from the refrigerated filling I made a day earlier.

But overall I am pleased with my first attempt at converting a yeast recipe to sourdough, and it's delish!

EDIT: filling recipe

• 100-150 g poppy seeds (I used something in the middle of this range)
• half a cup of honey
• half a cup of raisins
• half a cup of milk
• zest of one lemon

1. Boil the poppy seeds for 20 min in a cloth (I used a hemp nut milk bag, that was perfect).
2. Drain and tie up above the sink or a bowl and let liquid drip out.
3. Then the most interesting part: grind them! My grandma uses an old-fashioned manual meat grinder, in absence of that I used a mortar and pestle. Maybe a spice grinder would do too, but the seeds are still a little wet after boiling, I don't know if that would be a problem.
   • I forgot to do it once, and the grinding certainly brings out the flavour. When it works, you can see the seeds get crushed and a little white kernel is released from them.
4. Then combine the poppy seeds, milk, honey, lemon zest and raisins in a sauce pan and gently boil, until the liquid is (almost) completely absorbed/reduced. I find that there is always a little liquid left, but it gets absorbed as the mixture cools down.

Ilya's bake #1

I've tried Maurizio's ciabatta recipe before the CB 3 times, and was never satisfied with the result. So was quite keen to sort it out.

I followed Dan's 4th bake recipe. Here is the formula: https://fgbc.dk/vi6

Over two feeds I converted my 100% hydration rye starter into a 50% hydration BF starter. I found it tricky to monitor fermentation in it, since the growth was with such low hydration is not that obvious... So if i am being honest, I couldn't be sure in the strength of the starter, bit just went ahead hoping for the best. I made a ~50% hydration biga in the evening and let it ferment for 13 hours at RT (which is higher than recommended 14-16°C, but overnight it probably got close to that). Here is what it looked like:

Here is what it looked like in the morning when I was about to use it (the whiter parts is where I poked it a bit to see what was going on):

It certainly got much softer, but didn't have a particularly strong smell, slight acidity.

Did some slap&folds, left for 30 min. Did more slap&folds with wet hands/surface, so increased the hydration a bit addiitonally. Left for 30 min.

4x stretch&folds each 30 min mark.

Then 1.5 hrs bulk after that. Dough felt light and puffy, but not bubbly.

Divided in two and shaped into rough tubes, similar to what was shown in a video above.

Here they are on the couche:

Proofed in the fridge for a bit due to life, then took out and proofed for a bit more, until (I think) it was mostly done, and preheated the oven.

Stretched them out when moving to the peel, dimpled with fingers and baked with steam at 250°C on steel. Here made one of the stupidest mistakes and pushed one ciabatta too far and it partially slid off the steel... So the end was hanging off, stretching with heating and eventually burning off, very sad.

Baked for 20 min with steam and further 17 min without.

And here is what I got, not very exciting - you can see the burned end on one of them:

And here is the crumb from the one that I pushed too far:

I'll share if the other one, or the other end of this one, looks different.

Taste is quite nice, the crust is thin and somewhat crispy. But is it even ciabatta? Not very open at all!

Ilya's bake #2. Still not a ciabatta

Well, this is proving quite a challenge for me. Sorry for the long read, but wanted to provide as many details as I can.

As I mentioned above, I made a biga with weak 00 flour, which was immediately suggested to be a mistake. I only kept it at cool room temperature for a few hours in the evening, and then put in the fridge overnight. In the morning took it out and let warm up a little, and then mixed the final dough using bread flour and warm water (and salt). I had 77% prefermented flour, biga was 50% hydration, final dough was 75% hydration: https://fgbc.dk/vro

Making the biga was easy, but mixing the final dough by hand with so much 50% hydration biga is a real problem. I did it as best I could, and then did 100 slap&folds after a 15 min rest. At first it looked really nice and the dough was gaining strength, but then it just suddenly lost any structure and became very slack. I think it's quite a common progression with slap&folds, but it just wouldn't strengthen back and was getting really messy, so I just stopped and let it rest for 15 min. Then I did a set of strong stretch&folds, and left for 30 min again; this was followed by three more sets of stretch&folds spaced out by 30 min, and the in the en the dough was really smooth and strong enough for a windowpane.

Since mixing the final dough, a problem of lowly hydrated clumps were a problem. I had the same issue the previous time, and actually I could occasionally find particularly dense areas in the final bread, that must have come from these clumps. So I decided to fight them more thoroughly. While the dough is very weak it's really difficult, so I thought I'd keep pulling out small parts of the strengthened dough and squash those buggers to incorporate them. And around halfway doing it I realized I was probably really not helping the gluten that I developed this way, and was damaging the structure. But I felt like I had no choice, and just finished doing it.

Then I left the dough by the window for a slow bulk ferment without touching it, for around 2.5 hours. It was in a flat container that was a little too big, so it continued to flatten out during this time, but didn't actually cover all of the bottom surface, so it wasn't that badly soupy, I thought. But also because of that I couldn't really judge if there was any significant rise during this time (should have used an aliquot jar!). Then I gently scooped the dough that spread out, back to the main bulk of it, and turned it out onto a generously floured surface. I then divided the dough in two, and gently shaped into tube shaped, and placed on a couche upside down, and left to prove at slightly warmer temperature, around 25°C. When handling the dough is seemed OK - not impossible to handle, although didn't feel particularly strong either. What worried me more is no observable bubbles on the surface after bulk.

And no bubbles appeared during a rather long ~3 hour proof, and I couldn't see much rise happening. The poke test seemed to show some progress though, so I preheated my baking steel at 230°C and baked with steam for 15 min, and without for around 20 min. The dough was extremely soft and extensible before loading. I tried to stretch it a little when transferring onto the peel, and it just went all the way, I could barely fit it onto the peel and the steel.

And here are the results.

The crumb is very white, compared to my usual bakes - must be from the 00 flour. Crust is hard and crispy. Tastes nice! Much less acidic this time, maybe I detect a slight hint of sweetness. Crumb is a little moist, but not dense - although closed. Bubbles on top, again.

Ilya's bake #3. Improvement? Still far off

I decided to reduce the prefermented flour, and use only bread flour. Also added a little olive oil. Formula: https://fgbc.dk/1025

Made biga in the morning and left by the window all day - measuring the temp, it as i the perfect range 16-18°C. Moved it to the fridge in the evening.

In the morning mixed it with most of the water for the final recipe using a hand mixer on top speed. That worked well, took a little while, but at least no hard hand work, and no annoying clumps in the end.

Did bassinage: 50 slap&folds, add most water, 50 slap&folds, add rest of water, slap&folds until pretty well developed.

Rest 30 min.

3x stretch&folds with 30 min rest, placed in a bulking container and bulk fermented until >50% rise (starting from after stretch&folds), took a while, around 4 hrs - all in all 6 hrs. Dough was very jiggly, felt very light and airy, certainly ready, maybe over even?

Preheating the oven right after dividing, 230°C.

Baked after just ~20 min proof.

Did an experiment for the final shaping for the bake: gently stretched on of the breads, and dimpled another.

Unfortunately got barely any oven spring:

And the crumb is not particularly open:

Even more surprisingly, the crust is not crispy! Just mostly soft, only crispy in some darker spots on the ends that seemed to bake a little quicker. Never had a crust like that on any bread, at least in the first few hours after baking it's always crispy.

So, did I overferment the dough in bulk? Shouldn't forget about an aliquot jar next time, not used to it, but would be very useful...

Also I think I didn't preheat the steel enough, I was afraid of overproofing and rushed it a little. The bottom is a little pale.

I feel like I keep going through Maurizio's recipes. They are so nicely written up and presented, it's difficult to avoid the temptation.

I wanted to try to make bread that would really highlight the spelt grain. And at the same time I have been thinking that I've never made any pan loaves (with exception of rye bread, of course). And it seemed like a perfect combination to try: 100% whole spelt pan bread! And of course Maurizio has a recipe for that, so instead of reinventing the wheel I just followed his recipe: https://www.theperfectloaf.com/whole-grain-spelt-pan-loaf/

Here is the formula scaled to two of my small bread pans: https://fgbc.dk/v0l

I simply followed the recommendations as closely as possible. Despite 100% whole grain flour, and the very extensible nature of spelt, the dough was very nice to work with, only mildly sticky, which was easy to counteract with a little water on my dough scraper and hands.

What, however, didn't go as planned, was the proof. I shaped the dough into quite tight rolls, just like I shape for batards, and the top of the dough was barely reaching around half of the pan. And there it stayed for hours! I did not see any visible increase in the size of the dough. I suppose, it slowly filled in the cavities around the dough, so for it to stay the same height it did have to increase in volume a little, but nothing like what I expected, say 50% increase maybe. So I was a little worried, after proofing it for waaay longer than Maurizio writes (I didn't time it exactly, but it had to be over 3 hours instead of 1-2 hrs). In the end it did seem like it passed the poke test though, with an indentation that didn't get fully refilled after a few minutes, so I decided to bake it.

And boy, did I get nice oven spring. Should have scored them, I guess would have gotten even better spring!

Very flavourful (100% whole grain, after all!). I'd say the whole grain flavour is less strong than I expected, and nicer than regular wheat. Although I've never tried 100% whole wheat bread. In hindsight, should have added some sesame seeds together with the spelt bran on top, can't go wrong with that!

So I think the verdict is that it's a great bread, but why did it not grow during proof? I have to mention again, I've never made wheat pan loafs, and moreover I always do overnight retard, so probably have a lot to learn on these fronts!

I have finally managed bread with a significant content of spelt flour that didn't turn into a near-puddle before/during baking! I was really struggling with the elasticity it brings to the dough. But this time, while the bread is not super tall and did flatten out a little bit, it still has a decent shape. I was worried about scoring it too deeply which could cause more flattening, so I think I didn't score it deep enough... So the batard actually got some cracks on top.

I simply followed Maurizio's recipe: https://www.theperfectloaf.com/spelt-sourdough/

But the main point is flavour! I added a sesame seed coating, and together with the spelt this produces fantastic taste. And the crumb is amazingly soft, a bit shiny and almost moist.

This is my third time making it, the most successful yet (first one was great, but I didn't scale the dough correctly to my pans, breads were too small; second was without any malt flavouring, and a little underbaked). I simply followed the instructions in http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/37222/borodinsky-supreme-old-school-100-rye, but scaled ingredients to two small bread tins I have (rescaled recipe here https://fgbc.dk/nrq). The only real difference is that in absence of red rye malt I just used a little barley malt extract in the scalding. I also used a little more salt and ground coriander, and way less sugar. Borodinsky I am used to in Russia is not that sweet

Baked for 55 min (with grill on for the last 5 min for deeper colour on top)

Dark, but glossy top from the wheat dough washing and then starch custard coating after baking. I also added some caraway seeds on top together with coriander seeds (didn't put any in the dough).

Dark and moist crumb.

My first try, with some Polish herring with onions. Delicious.

I tried a couple of Maurizio's recipes with Kamut (baguettes and ciabatta), and while I had other issues with those breads, I loved the nutty/buttery taste of that grain!

I had some Kamut flour left from those bakes, and recently saw Benito posted his amazing looking 20% and 30% Kamut breads. So I decided to also just go for it! I used his 30% recipe, with some simplifications of the procedure (e.g. no lamination and shorter autolyse). Here is the compositions of the bread (I made two loaves): https://fgbc.dk/qeo

The dough was nice to work with, a little sticky but completely manageable. I shaped one as a batard (below) and one as a boule, that I gave away to a friend (I always bake two breads, and give one to someone). And these were one of my most successful "regular" (i.e. normal shape/process) breads in the last couple of months!

I accidentally switched on the broiler for the steamless part of this bake, and I actually loved the colour it brought out in the crust!

And of course it's delicious! For a 30% whole grain flour it's surprisingly light in colour, as usual for Kamut, and the golden hue of the crumb is just so beautiful. Definitely going to come back to this bake!

Continuing from a Russian "black" bread, so-called "baton" is another staple of Soviet and Russian shops. One of the most popular breads, it is delicious, with very slight sweet and buttery notes, and quite close, but very soft crumb. It sure was my favourite bread as a child.

Although not typically made with sourdough, after discovering a sourdough recipe I couldn't resist baking a couple of them. And my second attempt was rather successful! The recipe I followed is again from the Russian web site pechemdoma.com (literally - baking at home): https://pechemdoma.com/nareznoj-baton-na-zakvaske.html

Here is the translation of the method. I made double portion for two batons, here the ingrediants are for just one.

Preferment

30g mature wheat starter 100% hydration

30g warm water

40g flour (bread flour; if available, can replace 5g with rye flour for improved fermentation, which I did using whole rye)

Final dough

All preferment

245g bread flour

120g water (plus extra if needed, I used 15g extra for double portion)

4g salt

12g sugar

10g room temperature butter (or margerine)

1/8 teaspoon instant yeast (optional, I didn't use)

Method

Make preferment by dissolving starter in warm water, adding flour and mixing. Leave to ferment for ~8 hours at room temperature (I just left overnight, for more like 12 hours I think).

Sift flour into a mixing bowl, add salt, sugar and instant yeast, if using, and mix. Make a well in the flour mixture. Dissolve the preferment in water (I used warm), pour into the well, and mix the dough. Add a splash extra water if needed to hydrate the flour. The dough should be soft, but not sticky and should generally hold its shape. Lightly knead in the bowl 3-4 minutes, and then mix the room temperature butter in the dough in small portions. When all butter is mixed in, knead on a work surface (no flour) until smooth. Round up the dough and place back in the bowl for around 1 hr 15 min (40 min is using instant yeast).

Very lightly dust the work surface with flour and perform a double letter fold. Place the dough back in the bowl for 1 hour (or 30 min if using instant yeast). At this point I started seeing some signs of fermentation, with a couple of bubbles appearing and seemingly slightly increased volume, however the dough is not wet, so it's no very obvious at this stage.

Then take the dough and roll it out with a rolling pin into a rectangle relatively thinly (~1/2 cm I'd say). Then tightly roll it, avoiding trapping air, into a sort of short/thick baguette-like shape. Seal the seem on the worktop and leave to proof covered, until doubled (or until at least clearly increased in size, I don't think I got doubling). Took me around 3 hours with no instant yeast, with them recipe says around 1.5 hrs.

Spray with water and score the dough with deep diagonal cuts. Bake in a preheated oven at 220°C, first ~12 minutes with steam, around 30 minutes total. Optionally, cover with cold water or starchy gel immediately after takign out of the oven (I just used some water). Cool on a wire rack, for at least 40-50 min.

Mine don't have a typical look, for some reason the cuts didn't open up (perhaps should have cut deaper or given them a minute after scoring before baking, to avoid them sticking back?). A baton you can find in a shop in post-USSR countries looks like this (found on wikipedia): 

1920px-%D0%91%D0%B0%D1%82%D0%BE%D0%BD_%D0%A1%D0%BB%D0%BE%D0%B1%D0%BE%D0%B6%D0%B0%D0%BD%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%B8%D0%B9_%D0%A5%D0%B0%D1%80%D1%8C%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%B2.JPG

Nevertheless, the taste is authentic with very slight extra acidity from using sourdough (I imagine speeding everything up by adding a tiny amount of instant yeast would reduce that even further). Crust is much nicer than from a shop in Russia - thin, but crispy (as opposed to a very soft crust you get there). Delicious bread, that is also quite easy to make!

My first post here!

I've been baking sourdough bread for the last few months (ever since yeast completely disappeared from the shops for a while here in the UK), having never baked any bread before. I have produced some frisbees a couple of times and a few times made gorgeous loafs.

But I only just now started trying rye. Coming from Russia, it's something I miss here (although I've never been a big fan of rye breads, I guess you don't know what you like until you can't have it!). So I decided to bake it myself.

I previously got some of my baking equipment from https://scotlandthebread.org/, and already back then I got their Bread Matters rye starter - it's originally from Russia, so I couldn't say no to that. Now I also got two small bread tins from them, which although pricey are of excellent quality and feel nice and heavy in your hand.

Interestingly, finding dark rye flour is a little challenging here, but I managed to get some. And made some bread!

(Well, I am skipping one failed attempt with, I suspect, very overproofed bread: huge hole on the top, dense mass on the bottom).

I followed a Russian recipe from https://pechemdoma.com/100-rzhanoj-obdirnoj-xleb.html

Translation of the recipe:

Preferment:

140 g rye starter 100% hydration

155 g water

45 g dark rye flour

For the dough:

All of preferment

385 g dark rye flour

150 g water (plus a little extra if needed)

8 g salt

I mixed the preferment in the evening and left overnight on the kitchen table, for around 10 hours. Surprisingly, it didn't look any different in the morning, so I assumed it was too cold during the night and left it another 2-3 hours in the morning, until it started bubbling and smelled nice and fermented.

Then simply mixed in all dough ingredients (I needed 35 g extra water to make the dough feel what I thought was right - having never done this before) and left in the bowl for ~2 hours for bulk fermentation, then divided in two and put the dough into the tins, tightly packing it in to avoid empty spaces. Left it to proof until around 50% increase, which took 4.5 hours.

Baked in a preheated to the max oven without steam. Just before baking, dissolved a little wheat flour in water to make a very liquid dough, and carefully covered the tops of the loafs. After 10-15 mins turned down the oven to ~200°C and baked for a total of 1 hour. While the bread was baking, I dissolved a little starch (I had corn starch) in water and heated it until it thickened. Immediately after taking bread out, covered the top with a little of starch gel for a nice shiny top.

Cooled down in the tins for 10-15 mins, then took bread out and cooled on a wire rack. When still warm, but not hot, wrapped in a tea towel and left overnight, to soften the crust and equilibrate water throughout the bread.

And lo and behold, next day it's a beautiful dark rye bread. It's a little moist, with a delicious rye flavour and a sour tang.