Blog posts

Nature seems to have granted me an abundance of patience and in the past few weeks I have been undertaking experiments that seem destined to use it.

I have been wondering why my levain – which given the way I feed it should be dead by now – lives, thrives, and raises bread every week.  I have also been wondering about the results of soaking my home milled overnight prior to a mix and bake.

Now that we're back on land, I'm really enjoying my BIG home galley!     The picture below is of Almost Ko-Knead, which is a huge improvement over the original NKB!   Baked this loaf in my Romertopf clay baker and it turned out perfect . . . well, except for the slashing!  Anyone have suggestions on how to 'slash' NKB?   

Galley Wench's Almost No-Knead

Our daughter was here for a visit this week, and together we pushed our boundaries with regard to baking.

First, we had home-made pizza using previously frozen dough from the boule recipe in AB in 5. This was new for her, but not for me.

We next mixed a new recipe of the same dough, so that she could shape a loaf, and see what a time saver it is. Another use of the same dough was pitas for lunch. A first for both of is, and easy to do. I’ll make those again.

She wanted to do bagels next, so she used Floyd’s recipe, to be found here. Excellent.

My old new love KAM, is cursed. Or so it seems.

He committed suicide 2 weeks ago, by walking himself off the kitchen bench whilst mixing dough.

I finally had him replaced and on the second use the height adjustment was somehoiw altered and just scraped the bowl so hard that the protective white covering of the dough hook scraped clean off.

The bowl seems alright. A few scratches, on the bottom, but seemed enough to mix up another batch of dough (as I threw out the now contaminated dough in the bowl) which the paddle attachment.

Janedo's Basic Bread

Janedo's Basic Bread Crumb

Sourdough baguettes - crumb

Sourdough (mini) baguettes

I made my own version of sourdough baguettes.

Baguettes "Monge"

I got a (very) few actual crackles in the crust! A thrill!

Baguettes "Monge" Crust

I followed Hamelman's five-grain levain recipe, but used 3 grains: Rye, Oats and a sprinkling of roasted wattle seed (Acacia baileyana) as a hot soaker.

The flour is 50% high-gluten flour, 25% bread flour and 25% whole wheat flour. Hydration was 98% (!), but almost all the water got soaked up by the seeds.

The dough called for a liquid levain, spiked with a little instant dry yeast 0.4%.

Olive levain - cooling out of the oven

Olive levain no.2 - crumb