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Sorry that I've not been around much lately. My wife and I have been travelling quite a bit on the West Coast. We're contemplating a move to either Corvallis, Oregon or Providence, RI and have to decide within the next 10 days where we're going to spend what's likely to be the rest of our lives. So it's a been a bit stressful. We loved Corvallis, but haven't yet checked out Providence -- that's next weekend.

So, what better way to relieve some stress than the knead the bejeezus out of some dough?

I didn't take a lot of photos, as I couldn't find where we'd unpacked the camera until this afternoon, but I started on Friday with a big 2.5 lb. boule of desem bread. It turned out beautifully, though, once again, the crust was not so crispy.

I'm wondering, could it be the use of rice flour to dust my banneton that's the culprit? I love how effortlessly even the stickiest dough pops out of the banneton or couche with just a thin layer of rice flour, but since I started using it, I've gotten chewy, not crispy crusts, which should be happening at 500 degrees F in a cloche. Anyone else have this experience? I don't mean to malign the rice flour, but it's the only thing I can think of that I'm doing differently.

We took the desem to a dinner party, where it was mostly consumed. Then, Saturday night, we had pizza, which was lovely. I used the "whole wheat overnight crust" recipe from the King Arthur Flour Whole Grains Baking book. Next time, I want to try to stretch it out a bit thinner to the full 12 inches (it was about a 10 inch crust) because the pizza was a bit "bready", but I was terrified of tearing the dough, especially since I've misplaced the fabric for my Super Peel. I had to do it the old fashioned way, with a lot of semolina flour. Thankfully, it worked.

Then, this morning, I kneaded up a loaf of whole wheat caraway sourdough rye sandwich bread. It's derived from one of the test recipes that Peter Reinhart's been working on for his upcoming book (I can't wait) so I'd feel like a cad and a heel if I posted the recipe, but my version's got 40% rye, the rest whole wheat, salt, water, milk, butter, honey, a bit of sorghum molasses and caraway. I added the caraway and removed the yeast, since I figured, with rye sourdough, why not let it do its own thing?

It does it well. After 1 hour, it was nearly doubled, and I had to head to church. So I deflated the dough with a fold, and then put it in our unheated front room -- about 59 degrees. Three hours later, when I returned, it was tripled in size, but, luckily, not over-risen. So I divided and shaped it and then put it in my makeshift proof-box at about 80-90 degrees. Within 90 minutes, it was ready to go into the oven. Rye sourdough is amazing stuff.


For sourdough rye with no white flour, this is a high loaf. I was ecstatic. I was pleased with the color as well.




The crumb was uniform, but light. Perfect for a hearty sandwich. This is a loaf I'll be making again and again. Rye tastes great without caraway, but I've now discovered why they're partnered so often together. Delicious.

I'm brand new to this site, and WOW!  Awesome stuff.  I had never really ventured out online to find bread baking forums before.  I just kind of did my own thing and learned from people along the way (mainly my father, who's an excellent baker) and cook really only for myself and my girlfriend.  I have baked professionally in the past, but now have my own business in the financial markets and get to bake at home whenver I want, which is awesome.  I plan to keep a little blog here with some pictures of breads I bake.  Just a fun place to keep a journal of that part of my life.

The first pics are of my 2nd and 3rd attempts at a regular ol' sourdough boule.  

my second one

ciabatta sandwich rolls

and fougasse I made for some friends

I dont have many pics of stuff I've made, but continue to take more as I bake more.  My girlfriend absolutely loves taking pictures of everything, so I'm sure there'll be more in the future.  Have some pizza dough rising right now for tonight.  Spring's finally here and I feel in the mood for pizza like never before!

thought I would blog my progress. I have recently converted my garage into a bakery, i learnt to bake in france, spent 4 months with an artisan baker and then returned to bake here. Artisan bread is virtually unknown in these parts, in some cases when I take my baguettes into places to sell them people say "'what's that"' in most cases they don't even recognise it as a loaf of bread. Will endeavour(if anyone is interested to keep you updated on my progress) I will give you more info on output etc and post some pictures soon. Oh I live in Fish hoek Cape Town South Africa

I created a delicious spelt starter at the beginning of February and made some great loaves from it recently.

The one on the left was a 50/50 organic AP with organic light spelt flour (I can only afford 2.5 kg bags of spelt and ran out) while the one on the right is a 100% light spelt loaf. Both were excellent! The kids liked the 50/50 while I found the 100% to be exactly like pumpernickel in texture, great spread with peanut butter or pb/banana/honey!

I used Sourdolady's recipe for starter but reduced all liquids by 25%, otherwise too much liquid and the starter never matures. After a week the starter was active, not as much as white or rye, and definitely not as volatile as whole wheat, but it was bubbly and produced a pleasant aroma. You can use either whole or light spelt with no loss of nutrients as they are contained in the germ not in the bran as in wheat.

I used the basic sourdough recipe as given in Peter Reinharts BBA but with 25% less water again:

Starter:

4 ounces spelt starter, 4.5 ounces spelt flour, 0.75 to 1.5 ounces water

Final dough:

20.25 ounces spelt flour, 0.5 ounce Celtic sea salt, 9 to 10.5 ounces lukewarm water 

Kneading took about 20 minutes, but my house is cool these days which affects proofs immensely as well. However unlike all my sourdough experiences (save for yeats spiked variations), this spelt sourdough had far faster and greater second proofing results than wheat or rye starter.

This is going to be my main bread, and if the kids continue to enjoy it then I should experiment with spelt cinnamon buns soon too. 

success!

Hi I'd like to share with you all my Bread with Olives recipe. I'm new to thefreshloaf.com, just discovered it with the links from here that the recipe got on my blog.

Bread with Olives

This is a recipe for a bread famous with my family and friends. It comes with a small story: 10 years ago when I moved to work in Buenos Aires we celebrated a year going out with my girlfriend Carolina (now my wife), and had a fancy dinner in a great Hotel (Alvear Palace) with diamond ring... and all,... Well, the restaurant (Le Bourguiñone) has this wonderful bread with olives... but they wouldn't share the recipe...
It took me about 6 trials to get it really close, I believe the current version of the recipe yields a bread that's as good as the original or better. As I'm not in the restaurant business I'm ready to share the recipe of this tasty bread with the world...

Here is the whole recipe.

Hope you enjoy it. I will be posting a couple more (garlic, bacon and onion) in the next few days.

Marcelo.

Thank you Jane, JMonkey and Tom,

I finally had sucess getting decent (not as big as Jane's) Holes in my whole wheat Sourdough!!! The taste was definitely much superior to my previous attempts :)

I also made a hazelnul & a seeded bread with same dough. They looked gorgeous but did't have any impressive holes:

My staple bread for the past couple of years has been a miche. I started doing the BBA recipe with half bread flour and half KA whole wheat flour. Lately I've been experimenting with different blends of organic and sifted flours. I haven't yet settled on one recipe and change things every time I do it lately, but I thought I'd describe this basic recipe.

Mixed-Flour Miche: Loosely based on BBA Miche and Hamelman Mixed-Flour Miche.

I have some photos of my process.

Many, many thanks to JMonkey, SourdoLady, Zolablue, Mountaindog, Floydm, and numerous others. My results on this and other recipes are much better because of the great ideas I've found in the various blogs, postings, and lessons here.

Mixed-Flour Miche: Loosely based on BBA Miche and Hamelman Mixed-Flour Miche.

There is a "firm starter" that is built from white poolish-like starter as in the BBA "barm" version (50/50 by weight using breadflour and water), which is retarded overnight and included in the dough which is baked the same day.

The recipe I've been doing lately has evolved from the BBA miche recipe to be more like the "Mixed-Flour Miche" in Bread by Hamelman. My objective has basically been to have a high whole wheat content, but use sifted flours to get a less coarse crumb. I have also mixed red wheat and white wheat flours as well as tried some spelt trying to come up with a flavor that is not too "grassy" or "nutty". I find the taste of 100% white wheat bread to be a little too bland, whereas using too much red wheat seems bitter in a way I don't like.

As a result, I've ended up mixing various flours in an attempt to get something that is mostly whole wheat with some of the coarser bran sifted out and partly red wheat, partly white wheat for flavor.

The recipe showing in the photos is as follows, and is loosely based on both the BBA Miche and the Hamelman "Mixed-Flour Miche" in Bread.

For the firm starter:

• 7oz "BBA style barm" (100% hydration bread flour starter)
• 6oz Golden Buffalo flour (sifted red wheat flour from Heartland Mills)
• 3 oz KA Organic Whole Wheat
• 4oz water

Mix/knead ingredients for about 3 minutes to get a fairly firm not very sticky dough. Place in container and let rise to about 1.5x in volume - about 3 hours. Punch it down and allow to rise again to double - another 2.5 hours, roughly. Place in refrigerator overnight. I was trying to get this one to be a little more sour, and I think I went too far, as the bread was just a touch too sour for my tastes, but I don't like my bread very sour. Some might like the more sour flavor I got. My plan is to reduce the rise time of the firm starter and use less Golden Buffalo and maybe use whole spelt flour in higher proportion next time.

For the dough:

• 6 oz KA whole spelt flour
• 8 oz Golden Buffalo sifted red wheat flour (Heartland Mills)
• 3 oz KA Organic Whole Wheat
• 6 oz sifted white wheat flour (Homestead Grist Mill)
• 6 oz Sir Lancelot High Gluten flour
• 3 oz KA Rye Blend
• 29 oz water
• 3/4 tsp diastatic malted barley flour
• 26 grams salt (about .9 oz)
• Firm starter from day before.

Cut up firm starter and cover with towel to allow the pieces to lose their chill.

Autolyse: Mix all but salt and starter in bowl until the ingredients form a uniform shaggy mass. Allow to rest for 60 minutes.

Mix and knead dough: Push the pieces of starter into the dough and sprinkle with salt. Mix/knead for 5 minutes to form a supple, fairly soft dough. The total hydration of the entire overall dough is 82%, so it is relatively soft at the beginning. Place in a container to rise.

Fold the dough hourly: The total bulk fermentation time was 4.5 hours. I think I probably went too long, though. Anyway, I was folding it using the technique in Hamelman's Bread, i.e. (very roughly) turn the dough out on a bed of flour top down and gently spread it out/push out some of the gas. Then pull out and stretch one side of the dough and fold it toward the center. Do the same for the other three sides. Put the dough back in the container with the top up and the seams down. I may have "overfolded", as the dough seemed a little "too tough" possibly, and I didn't get as much oven spring as I was hoping for.

Shape into boule: Form a boule not too differently from the folding technique above, except it is more of a gathering in of the edges of the dough and pinching them together to stretch the "top" of the dough (which is face down on the counter as with the folds). Flour a couche with rice flour and place in 8 quart steel mixing bowl, and then place the dough in the couche seams up.

Final Proof: Allow to rise for about 2.5 hours - again I let it go until 3 hours, and I think it was probably too long to wait.

Place on parchment: Place parchment on an upside down baking sheet or a peel and flour with coarse corn meal. Invert the bowl with the dough onto the parchment and pull away the bowl. Gently pull away the couche, which works great with the rice flour on the couche. Slash as photos show. I very lightly spray water on with spray mister.

Bake: Preheat oven to 500F well before this point, like an hour before. Use various steaming techniques as described many places for home ovens. Drop temperature to 450F after about 5 minutes. Bake at 450 for 10 minutes, then rotate loaf and drop temperature to 400F for another 20 minutes. Then rotate and drop temperature to 375F. Continue to bake until internal temperature is about 208F.

I would enjoy hearing any comments about how to manipulate flavor, the amount of rise, crumb texture, and so on. This bread did not rise quite as much as some others I've done in similar fashion. There are a few reasons I can think of, such as too much fermentation and proofing time, starter slightly too ripe and sour, possibly folding too much, maybe kneading too much in the very beginning, and so on. I also think the sour flavor is too much for my tastes, and other versions I've done were less sour. I think this is due mainly to overly long fermentation and proof, and to allowing the starter to become too ripe. Also, I used a higher proportion of red wheat flour in this starter than previously.

Well, I am not losing my mind, at least not over some carda-whatever.  I have a picture of a label in my camera-phone that I will have to upload if I can figure out how.  The label on the containers of carda-whatever are actually spelled wrong!  HA, no wonder I was confused.

Anyhooo, enough on my spelling angst.  I am only working every other weekend at the bakery for the winter and finishing my apprenticeship at a coffeehouse.  It's a lot slower paced there, with a very limited menu of baked items.  Muffins, brownies and cookies are all I have to make.  Usually, the owner makes the muffins as I can't come in early in the morning anymore because of my winter schedule.  It's the break I need as I have two really intense classes for the winter, accounting and small business management.  SBM is basically all about making a "real" business plan.  The final exam is presenting your plan to the class and teacher like they are bankers and you are trying to get a loan.  So, I am doing a lot or research into pricing of items like supplies, equipment and even drywall for the remodeling of my "shop."  I also have to come up with a name, menu and pricing, along with a zillion other things I can't think of right now as my head is swimming with ideas.  Any suggestions would be appreciated!

See where I am spending my apprenticeship:

http://www.8thstreetcoffeehouse.com/index.html

My son is a huge Legend of Zelda fan. He has been for years actually.

When he was 3, he wanted to dress as the hero "Link" (Green Boy, as he called him) for Halloween.

Here was his costume:

So when he asked for a Zelda cake for his birthday, I had to think about how I was going to do this. I'm not exactly a professional cake decorator!

I finally took some classic imagery from the game - the sword in the stone, the hero, and the Tri-force symbol that appears throughout the game, as my inspiration for the cake.

I started with cookies, which I cut and painted with food coloring ink.

I made a couple of Link cookies to choose from, and a partial sword cookie too.

Then I made a chocolate cake, which I froze and cut and rearranged:

And finally some cream cheese chocolate frosting, purple sparkle sugar sprinkled (his favorite color) and some strategically placed non-chocolate frosting with yellow sugar sprinkles and voila!

He liked his cake!