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I had promised my grandaughter's teacher a loaf of sourdough and planned to make Susan's loaf, the one baked under the ss mixing bowl. My starter seems to be really hearty and I was pretty confident the loaf would be as good as my latest several. Yesterday was the day, and for some reason the dough didn't have the usual feel and I refrigerated it with trepidation. So while it was warming up for the 2 hours this morning I started a batch of Susanfnp's Semi-Sourdough, thinking that I would use it as back up. The gloomy dough had risen slightly in the refrigerator and to my amazement it rose like crazy under the bowl and even crackled as it cooled. The back up dough was very slack and took lots of stretching and folding and I was sure it was going to make doorstops but the bread fairies were with me and I now have three presentable loaves. All I have to do is decide which one to give away, A.

Maybe disaster is a bit dramatic but I am hoping someone will be able to help me. I was about to shape the boule, using Susan's sourdough recipe, when I noticed tiny black specks in the rice flour coating the linen liner in my banneton. (Pays to out on my glasses once in a while!) Upon further inspection I found that the mold was well established in the linen. Luckily the banneton came with two liners. I hadn't washed the liner because I thought the idea was to get it well seasoned with rice flour and I was very complacent about the fact that my dough didn't stick. I always line it with parchment for the NKB but not for the sourdough. So can I wash the brown linen liner with bleach - I imagine it would be a pain to completely rinse out the odor? Or do I have to toss the liner? Lemon juice and sunshine would be safer but sunshine is in short supply up here in WA. Has anyone else had this happen, and can anyone suggest a remedy? I look forward to any help, thank you, A.

I link my photos from flickr...so far it is the easiest way for me work it :S

I have a few contacts on my flickr friends list...all people who saw my photos and decided they wanted to add me. So I add them back :)

One contact posted this most delicious looking recipe. It is in another language, but they also have written it in english below the entry in their native tongue.

It looks absolutely scrummy! So, I thought I'd post a link for those who want to have a look.

http://notitievanlien.blogspot.com/2007/12/bread-baking-day-nr-5.html

Thegreenbaker

Today I had a little triumph.

My oven has been broken for 5 days and finally the oven repair man came to replace the element....yesterday....

So, after testing the oven with lentil Pie and Steak and red wine pie (for the hubby) last night. I was ready to make some bread today.

I had made a poolish, but after a bit of a busy/mixed up day, it had been left out for too long and I decided not to use it. I had made it way too wet as it was anyhoo.

So, I threw together a half Wholewheat and half white loaf. Indending it to be a sandwhich loaf as I have missed toast ovwer the past week! *pouts* I decided that I might try adding a teaspoon (heaped) of treacle into the mix thinking it would be nice with the whole wheat. So, I did.

The whole recipe went

2 Cups strong whole wheat flour (about 12 %)

2 Cups strong white flour (about 11.6%) both organic.

3 tablespoons olive oil

2 teaspoons active dry yeast.

1.5 teaspoons salt

about 2 cups luke warm water. (I began with 1.5 cups but then had to add 1/4 cup extra, then a 1/4 cup extra on top....it was then a liiiitle sticky which was alleviated when I kneaded it with more flour)

I mixed the whole wheat and the white flours together in a bowl. added the salt and mixed again.

I then dissolved the treacle and yeast in the water (1.5 cups)...left it for about a minute then poured the oil into the water mixture.

Poured the whole lot into the flour and mixed adding extra water as I went until it came together.

I then kneaded the dough (with extra flour as I'd added a little too much water) for about 10 minutes...perhaps a little more....

and left it to rise for an hour in a warm place.

Then gave it another knead (its a sandwhich loaf) and placed it back in an oiled bowl covered to rise for another hour.

I shaped it and rolled it in seeds then left it to rise for 45 minutes in a warm place (covered)

Placed it in a preheated oven for 50mins at 190 degrees celcius.

What I do for my sandwhich loaves is I own two loaf pans (well 4 but they are 2 pairs in different sizes)

I use the spare loaf pan as a lid while rising and for the first 10-15 mins in the oven.

It works a little like the la cloche and keeps the surface moist so that it has as much chance of springing as I can give it.

Usually it works alright, but tonight.....

It worked a treat.

This is by far the best sandwhich loaf I have made :)

The only thing I'd change is making it 100% whole wheat if I were to keep the treacle in it, or omit the treacle and use honey or nothing.

I didnt score it so it tore, but, I kind of like the tear....it says to me I made a good bread that wanted to rise. It looks rustic aswell :)

And below is the crumb shot. Very nice for a sandwhich loaf :) Lets hope I keep repeating these happy results!

I've had a number of discussions with TFL participants recently about sourdough rise times versus temperature and inoculation. Temperature has a big effect on sourdough rise times, and sometimes a starter appears unhealthy, when it is really just rising more slowly because of low temperatures in the kitchen during winter. Also, recipes that used to work seem to fail during the winter, but the colder temperatures may be the cause. To adjust for cold winter kitchen temperatures, either the temperature must be managed actively (oven with pilot light or electric light, coolers with a bowl of warm water in them, and so on), or the percentage of fermented flour must be adjusted in the recipe, or much more time must be allowed for the bulk fermentation and proofing.

I constructed a table that provides (in hours) the doubling time, bulk fermentation time, proofing time, and total mix-to-bake time for various temperatures and percentages of fermented flour. The table has two sections, one for no salt meant for unsalted levains, and one for 2% salt meant for doughs or salted levains.

Inoculation, as used in the table, is the percentage of fermented flour contributed by a levain or storage starter to the total flour in a levain or dough. For example, if 50g of storage starter at 100% hydration is contributed to 225g of flour and 175g of water to create a levain, then the total flour is 250g (25g+225g) and the percentage of fermented flour is 10% (25g out of 250g total flour). Similarly, if a dough containing 1Kg of total flour is made by contributing the levain just mentioned to 750g of flour and 550g of water and 20g of salt, then the inoculation or percentage of fermented flour is 25%, or 250g out of a total flour of 1Kg.

The table is made to match up to rise times for whole wheat, high extraction, or generally high ash content flours I tend to use in my sourdough hearth breads. For pure white flour doughs and levains, the times tend to be about 20% longer, i.e. white flour rises a little more slowly.

Your starter may well be faster or slower than mine. If you build a test levain using a representative entry in the table, such as 10% at 75F, you can see how your starter compares to these table entries and then adjust your rise times and proof times up or down by the same percentage. For example, if you starter doubles in 80% of the time indicated in the table, then it makes sense to use 80% of the time in the table for other temperatures and inoculations also.

You can see from the table that the rise times vary over a huge range depending on temperature. Also, inoculations need to be changed drastically for long overnight rises, depending on temperature.

The strategy for maintaining a starter should also change dramatically if the temperature is 65F instead of close to 80F in the kitchen from winter to summer. For example, a 25% inoculation at 65F results in a 10 hour mix-to-bake time, which is a couple of hours before a levain would peak and begin to collapse, but at 80F an inoculation of only 0.5% results in a 10 hour mix-to-bake time. I've used this model at wide ranges of temperature and had reasonable results. The interesting thing to notice is that a 20g:30g:30g feeding at 65F peaks in around 12 hours but a 1g:100g:100g feeding at 80F peaks in around 12 hours, too. Or, if you look at the mix-to-bake time at 65F for a 10g:45g:45g feeding (10% inoculation), it's 12.5 hours, so if you feed that way at 65F the starter won't be getting to its peak and may be overfed if the feeding is repeated every 12 hours, while the same feeding at 80F will peak in less than 8 hours, so a 12 hour schedule will work well at that temperature.

This is simplified from my rise time models, so it doesn't include some additional adjustments for the dough consistency I make in my spreadsheets. Of course, this is a very rough approximation. All kinds of complications may cause these numbers to be different from actual results. So, it's just a guideline and something to think about, and it's biggest use may be as a learning tool or to just get in the general ballpark for rise times. For example, if your temperatures are very different from the ones the author assumed in the recipe, or if you just don't have an idea where to start with rise times for some recipe your trying, maybe the table will help.

Apologies in advance, if it turns out there is a bug in the table somewhere, but at least some of the numbers made sense after browsing through the table.

A late entry. For Christmas I made stollen with a recipe that looked like it would produce something close to what I know from The Netherlands.

Dutch Regale's Almond/Rum Stollen

I did look at many recipes, but finally decided on a mix of two recipes. I used mostly the recipe from Glezer's Artisan Baking across America for "Dutch Regale's Almond Stollen," but incorporated a slightly different mix of dark and golden raisins with a small amount of candied cherries, all soaked overnight in rum. Dutch stollen uses something called "sukade," but I haven't found that available here.

I suppose this is not an easy recipe (recipe post here). The first try resulted in something that was delicious, but a little flat and dense. It was almost more like a somewhat moist shortbread. For the second try I did the same recipe but worked more on developing the initial dough. The result was better (see picture, although this is not a picture of the best specimen: it disappeared before I could take a picture) and surely was declared delicious by all that ate it.

The almond paste was made from equal weights (250 g) of almond flour (I'm too lazy to blanch and grind almonds), fine granulated sugar, and an egg. I made three times this recipe about two weeks ahead of time. The texture and taste improves notably by keeping it in the fridge over that time.

The stollen went to us and some close friends where we celebrated Christmas. For many other friends and neighbors I made Panettone. We had a progressive block party on the 29th and my wife signed us (me) up for the bread course. I baked 4 baguettes, 3 epis and 3 loaves of Tom Leonard's Country French. I've pictured all these before, so no new pictures.

I made another of the "favorite recipes" from this site.

for the pain aux raisins, I added lots of raisins (my husband loves them).

I used a pastry bag with a star tip to pipe in the cream cheese filling.

A little help from my friends, please? Bear with me, here comes one of my notorious rambling lead-ins to some serious baking questions. I love The Splendid Table with Lynn Rosetto-Kasper on Natl Public Radio; doesn't everyone? Years ago she recommended a book, "FoodWise" by Shirley O. Corriher on both the science and the mechanics of cooking. I gave it to my son-in law as a gift and then borrowed it back just the other day. The first ninety some pages are on the wonders of risen bread and there is a wealth of very basic info that I must have encountered elsewhere but have yet to assimilate. Some of it would have helped my most recent baking.

This morning I baked a second attempt at Peter Reinhart's Pain a l'Ancienne rustic baguettes. I mostly use a high gluten flour, about 12.5% protein, but I've heard somewhere that crusty French breads are the product of rather weak flour. For this baking I mixed low protein with high protein white flours 2:1 to get about a 9% protein blend. I followed the BBA formula except that the absorbtion of the water seemed higher than usual so I kept adding a bit more ice-water until the dough remained sticky at the bottom of the mixer as described. I popped it into the refrigerator to retard overnight. This morning it was partially risen when I removed it and let it sit at cool room temperature. After three hours it was actively proofing even though it was still quite cool. I think I allowed this bread to over-proof the first time I made it so I preheated the oven to 500 degrees and turned out the dough onto a heavily floured surface and stretched it to an oblong. I cut the oblong into five strips with the bench scraper dipped in water and baked two at a time at 475 degrees in my curved baguette pan (shaped like this UU) on a top rack with a baking stone. I didn't slash at all because I didn't want to deflate these long thin loaves.

Well, the bread is delicious, the formula is wonderful but my execution is flawed! The crumb is open mostly at the top per the photos- Sorry can't post pictures now- I'll insert them when the problem clears up!

FoodWise says that the problem may be a too hot oven; might the top of my big oven not be the best place to bake these baguettes? I'm also reading that a pale crust such as I'm getting can be from too little protein. What is your experience with these variables? JMonkey, I'd be very pleased with your results!

I received my copy in my Christmas package from England, and at first I was a bit upset because it isn't all bread baking. It does have some interesting reading apart from the recipes, and TFL is mentioned in the Bread Directory. Described as "A lively community for amateurs", and having tried to keep up with the latest postings I think they have that right! My niece also sent me The BIG Book of Bread. The good news is that all of the recipes are given by weight, the bad news that many of them begin: 500g packet white bread mix. It does have a whole section of gluten free recipes, and as we all know we can never have too many bread books, A.

Hi everyone,

Here in San Diego, we're working on our third inch of rain since Friday, the Chargers played on TV (and won, big whoop), so it's a good day to stay inside and bake something! I've blogged before about the filled bread from The Artisan site here, but it's such fun to make, and so pretty, that I'm doing it again. The dough is nice and soft (almost sticky), made with just the basic four ingredients. It stretches out very easily to make a bed for the filling.

This time, the filling is a one-pound bag of frozen spinach sauteed with olive oil, lots of garlic, oregano, basil, and chunks of red bell pepper. After spreading the filling on the dough, I sprinkled it with crumbled feta and folded it into the 'book' shape described on The Artisan's bread site. Look for 'Pane Ripiene' on the left hand menu.

I brushed the loaf with olive oil, then sprinkled it with sesame seeds (the best tasting seeds in the world, IMO). Halfway through baking, I rotated the loaf and sprinkled pecorino-romano on it.

There's something wonderful about a complete meal you can carry around in one hand...leaves the other hand free to hold the wine glass. It's even good the next day at room temperature.

Try this bread with your favorite filling.

Sue