Benito's blog

Einkorn Red Fife Sourdough No. 3

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Third in my series of Einkorn bakes.  This time I increased the Einkorn to 20% and reduced the Red Fife to 9% all of which was in the preferment.  Other changes I used the aliquot jar and ended bulk fermentation at 40%.  I did a preshape, bench rested for 15-20 mins then final shaped and into the banneton.  I left it out on the counter until the aliquot jar showed just over 50% total rise (not 50% additional rise) then put it into a 2ºC fridge for cold retard.

Einkorn Red Fife Sourdough Batard No. 2

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I’ve made this once before and wanted to give it another go since I still have some Einkorn and wanted to inch up the % of it in the bake.  Being aware of the difficulty baking with Einkorn, I just increased the amount from about 10% to 13.5%.  The dough handled just fine.

Bread flour 71%

Whole Red Fife 15.5%

Whole Einkorn 13.5%

Prefermented flour 9%

Diastatic malt 0.5% 

Hydration 80% 

Levain 1:1:1 with whole red fife fermented 78ºF for 6 hours.

Autolyse 3 hours.

Spelt, Red Fife and Rye Sourdough

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I wanted to see how far I could push bulk fermentation and with this bake I probably went a bit far.  I’ve baked this bread before which is in total 50% whole grains but I’ve never pushed the hydration to 83% which I did for this bake.  I also used my aliquot jar and shaped once it showed that the dough had risen 50%.  Given the lack of oven spring, I think for my skill set, 83% hydration and 50% rise made the resultant dough a bit too loose to shape tightly and attain better oven spring.  I’ll post photos of the crumb when I slice it tomorrow.

Marinated Artichoke Olive Sourdough Pizza

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Once again using my favourite sourdough pizza dough recipe that was written by Will the Pie King and shared during the Community Bake, I made a Marinated Artichoke and Olive sourdough pizza.  Actually I made two 9-10” pizzas tonight and will make another two tomorrow.  In the past I have usually cold retarded them for 48 and 72 hours.  This time I wanted to see what would happen if I cold retarded for 72 and 96 hours.  Well tonight of course was the 72 hours and the dough performed as expected, very well.

My second set of baguettes

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So I decided to try baguettes again having had one previous attempt.  This time I tried the Anis Bouabsa recipe more or less based on what MTloaf and Alfanso posted here.

My first baguettes

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So after much prodding from certain people, you know who you are, I finally tried making baguettes.  I decided to try to keep it as simple as possible and just try an IDY recipe.  I had a look at Peter Reinhart’s recipe and decided to have a go at that.  It didn’t require a poolish nor levain, just IDY.

Furikake 振り掛け / ふりかけ Sourdough Discard Crackers

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I tried to put together another variety of sourdough discard cracker this morning, furikake.  Those of you familiar with Japanese food will know that Furikake (振り掛け / ふりかけ) is a dry Japanese seasoning meant to be sprinkled on top of cooked rice, vegetables, and fish. It typically consists of a mixture of dried fish, sesame seeds, chopped seaweed, sugar, salt, and monosodium glutamate. ... Furikake is often brightly colored and flaky.

Black and White Sesame Seed Sourdough

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I haven’t been feeling great about my baking lately, I’d been over proofing my bread and really disappointed in how they turned out.  I decided that I needed to go back to a recipe that I’d made many times when I first started to bake sourdough, so I went back to Maurizio’s Beginner Sourdough from The Perfect Loaf.  For some reason the flavour of this bread always speaks to me.  However, I decided I still wanted some sort of add in, but one that wouldn’t negatively affect the crumb too much, so since I love sesame seeds I went with black and white sesame seeds.

Butterfly Pea Flower Sourdough

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I’ve been following Kirsten of FullProofBaking on Instagram and have been interested in trying her Butterfly Pea Flower Sourdough for sometime.  I finally purchased some butterfly pea flowers on Amazon and decided I’d try to bake this.

Butterfly pea flowers 14.5 g dried flowers, green leaves and stems plucked off.  Steeped in 360 g boiling water x 10 mins and cooled, then 342.5 g added to flour during autolyse.

 

Total Dough Weight 900 g

 

Bread flour 80%  

Whole Grain 20%