Another Girl's blog

I’ve been ordering berries from Barton Springs Mill for several years and have enjoyed every single product I’ve ordered from them. The flavor profiles they provide have been pretty accurate from my perspective, which is very helpful. Some nine or ten months ago, their Quanah wheat caught my eye. It is described as a hard red winter wheat and its flavor profile – buttery, creamy, malty – is right up my alley. A bag was duly ordered and, regrettably, it has been in storage ever since, waiting for me to bake my way through all the berries ahead of it in queue.

After seeing some nice bakes based on the Pain de Campagne in Martin Philip's post, Don't be a bread hostage at the KAF website, I decided to give it a try. It seems in keeping with my recent effort to simplify my baking. Besides, after all the more neutral pan breads I've been making lately, I was in the mood for a sourdough. 

This is Benny's 100% WW Sourdough Hokkaido Milk Bread. (The link points to his 2.0 version and I'm not positive whether I made that one or another variant.) Anyway, I attempted this bread back in January but got no rise to speak of, undoubtedly because I did not a thing to prepare my rye sour for a sweet levain and enriched dough. I baked it anyway and while it rose a couple inches in the oven, it barely filled half the pan.

BACKGROUND

My husband isn’t a big sourdough fan, so I will occasionally fiddle around with ways to minimize the acidity in our bread. Recently, I was thumbing through the second edition of Hamelman's Bread and was intrigued by his introduction to the formula for Swiss Farm Bread, in which he notes a lack of acidity. I decided to give it a try. 

This is my first blog entry but not my first post. I thought it might be worthwhile to post my experience with the new Anova Precision Oven, which has been promoted, in part, as a steam oven suitable for bread baking. My review is pretty mixed, but after a dozen or more failed bakes, I’ve finally begun to see good results.