bread1965's blog

I had a friend make this recently. He had trouble with the dough being too slack and this loaf ended up dense. I thought I'd make it to figure out where he might have lost his way. I soon realized it wasn't him. There's a problem with the recipe IMHO. While making the dough I googled and realized many others struggled with this recipe. It calls for seed additions that are excessive and much too much water in the seed soaker. For a 500g loaf it's asking for about 145g of flax that's soaked in water twice that amount. That's a 30% seed addition.

With plenty of ripe sourdough and a love of chocolate I came across this recipe: https://www.farmhouseonboone.com/sourdough-chocolate-cake Without a doubt this is the best chocolate cake I've ever baked and probably eaten. I used two cups of dark brown sugar and a bunt pan. There's no need for frosting or the like. It's a great way to use extra starter.

After bringing my starter in from the cold he's had a few very active days on the counter-top. Inspired by the Poilane Masterclass I baked her signature Poilane style wheat loaf. It's a very low hydration, very high levain hearty loaf. The wheat really shines in this loaf and the crumb is firm and hearty. The crust is thick and crunchy. Grandma and Mom would have been happy.. as am I! She talks about keeping the bread wrapped in linen so I'm going to try that this week and see how it dries out.

This week I followed David and baked this beautiful bread. It uses buttermilk in place of water other than for the levain. I made the levain two days before using it. This bread has a super soft crumb and notwithstanding the dark colour (from the buttermilk) the crust is delicate. The tang from the rye sour, buttermilk and long ferment make this (for me) an instant classic. It's truly a beautiful bread and worth trying.

This morning I baked Sarah Owen's Buttermilk Rye. This is a nice bread! It's interesting in that it uses banana in the starter as a Japanese influence. Otherwise it's (for rye I think) a relatively straight forward bread. Personally I'm after making a seeded rye bread that I can use as a "go to" loaf. But I read this recipe in her book "Toast and Jam" and thought to give it a try. It is so good!! I"m actually not a huge rye bread guy. And I find it so strange to work with dough that feels like I'm a stone mason handling concrete! But this is fun and tasty!

I've decided to work on dense seeded rye breads this winter. This is my first attempt. The recipe is fairly straight forward - it's a blend of high extraction (I used whole) spelt and whole rye flours with a large number of sprouted rye berries. It includes sunflower, pumpkin, flax and sesame seeds. It calls for un-hulled sesame seeds which I didn't have so I used hulled. For liquids it uses buttermilk, dark malt and dark beer (I used Guinness) and water of course.

Here are the results:

After an absence from bread baking I often come back to this bread to get myself back in the groove. It's Sara Owens' Honeyed Oat Spelt Sourdough bread. This picture is right after taking the lid off the combo cooker.

I'm getting back into baking after a busy summer.

I made this tonight and continue to be a fan of Sara Owens' recipes. Everything I've made from her books I've really enjoyed. This cake has only 30 grams of brown sugar and only uses whole wheat flour. It has five ripe bananas in it - which are placed in the oven with the brown sugar and a bit of rum to roast for 15 minutes before you make the batter. It uses ripe starter but I don't even think it's necessary given baking powder and soda powder are used in the recipe.

I've been experimenting lately with left over starter. I'm creating a stiff Pate Fermentee with it and a few days later adhoc a recipe. The breads are fine but nothing wow yet. This was my recent attempt. I'm posting this for recording keeping more than anything else.

Pate Fementee was 1 part ripe starter, 2.5 part water and 4.5 part AP flour - or 60, 132 and 270 respectively. I left it out for an hour and then put it in the fridge.

Final dough was made two days later:

- 150g pate fermente

- 125g whole wheat flour

- 375g all purpose flour

-12g salt

I decided to venture into enriched breads this week and make Pain de Mie from The Perfect Loaf: https://www.theperfectloaf.com/pain-de-mie/