benjamin's blog

This morning marked my return to baking following a long hiatus. The holidays, vacation, and grant writing all converged to make baking an impossibility. My starter, left unattended for weeks, was on its last legs. Fortunately I was able to bring it back to former glory with only a couple of feedings. I began the process for making Hamelman's 'Vermont Sourdough' yesterday, retarded overnight and baked this morning. This has to be my favorite sourdough bread, the small inclusion of rye and mild tang give a perfectly balanced flavor. 

The weatherman has forecast a brutally hot day in the city... heeding his warning my girlfriend and I went for an early morning bike ride whilst my doughs were rising, and returned to bake them before the heat set in. On the agenda for today was a sourdough rye with walnuts (from "bread") and Larry's English muffins (the original recipe can be found here).

This week I tried my hand at the 'sourdough seed bread' from Bread by Hamelman. This is the first time I have attempted this loaf, however I am yet to be displeased  with a single recipe from 'Bread', and so fully expected to be satisfied with the outcome… I was not disappointed.

I've been taking it easy with the baking lately due to the excessive heat in center city Philadelphia, which has been hovering around 100 for the past few days now. I always feel guilty running the air conditioners and the oven at full tilt simultaneously, half expecting Al Gore to knock on my door and give me a lecture. Regardless, I had the itch to bake, and so I went back to one of my favorite recipes, the Vermont sourdough from 'Bread'.

Levain Build

I'll confess, I am a 'glory poster', as such, I only post bread on my blog when I am reasonably satisfied with the result. That being said, last week I made a batch of baguettes using Hammelmans poolish recipe, suffice it to say, the final bread looked so amateurish that you would think I had never touched flour and yeast before. Sadly, this is an all to common event when I make baguettes. It is the only type of bread in my common repertoire that I can't get some level of consistency with.

Last night I made the San Fransisco sourdough from 'Advanced bread and pastry' by michael Saus. Though this is a great recipe, the major point with this bread was the steaming technique I tried out. I have tried countless ways to efficiently steam my oven, including a moderately dangerous, self-invented water injection system... needless to say, results were not incredible, and most definately not worth the third degree burns.

I was entirely inspired by Shiao-Pings recent blog entry entitled 'Sourdough Down Under'. The part that really grabbed my attention was the inclusion of Vegemite in the dough. As an English boy I have a love affair with vegemite's cousin from the northern hemisphere: marmite.

I have often spread marmite lovingly across my yeasty creations, yet had never considered incorporating it into a dough!

I attempted David's sourdough adaptation of the anis bouabsa baguette...

I have made soft pretzels in the past, and have always enjoyed them, however I have always wanted to make a sourdough version. After much internet research, I did not come across any recipes that called out to me, so I decided to do my own. I adapted a Bertinet recipe, simply replacing fermented white dough in the recipe with an equal quantity of firm sourdough starter. I also retarded the dough in the fridge over night... though this was more to do with the fact that I wanted to bake them fresh the next morning rather than anything else.