With cold weather settling in I'm spending more time baking. I decided to make some whole wheat bread inspired by Tartine's version. It has about 60% whole wheat, 10% whole spelt and 30% all purpose unbleached flours. It has about 83% hydration and I added 5% wheat germ. 10% levain was used and I overnight-ed the loaves in the fridge for about 15 hours. Baked at 450 for 20 lid on and 20 with lid off - great oven spring.
Hi Everyone.. we're going to see a friend for dinner this weekend and I'm going to bring dessert. But it's complicated.. I need to bring something that is vegan, gluten free, has no dairy, peas, corn or wheat.. I could pass and bring a salad but figured that someone on the board has an idea.. I thought I could make a toffu based cream cheese pie and make a non-gluten free graham cracker crust, but any other ideas? I've never done that before an am not sure how good the toffu cream cheese would taste.. Thanks.. frank!
After a long absence it was time to get back to baking. My starter stoically withstood the deep chill of neglect in my fridge and as is always a surprise to me came back to life with great vigour after a few feedings. I liked the look of Tartine's Danish Rye and gave it a try. Dark seeded rye breads have always intrigued me. The recipe called for sprouted rye kernels but my lack of good timing and impatience had me use them just after a single night's full soak rather than fully sprouted.
I've been wanting to get into dark rye seeded breads. I didn't have much time this weekend and found this recipe online and gave it a try. https://www.occasionallyeggs.com/easy-overnight-dark-rye-bread/ I looked at Stanley's (Rye Baker) recipes but they involved more time than I had available. The recipe I used called for cocoa powder instead of a dark beer which i wasn't sure about, but without experience thought it might be work.
There's something about oats in bread that I find compelling! Inspired by the community bake I made Maurizio's Oat Porridge bread. I followed the recipe as written other than to add 25 grams of raw honey to the dough (I just made one loaf). I baked it a bit too hot as I pre-heated the oven at 550 and didn't catch it until 10 minutes into the bake. That said, while the crust was a bit darker than I'd like, overall it turned out well.
I keep making much to much starter and my fridge has been littered with glasses and jars of left over starter. I had one left to use up and this is what came out. I had 100 grams of starter that hadn't been fed in a week and no plan. It kind of all worked out. I fed it 1:1:1 and then added another 600 g of water and 800g of unbleached bread flour as that's all I have in the house right now. Based on last week's bake and the impact oat bran had on creating a soft crumb I decided to add some steel cut oats to this bread.
I've commented on this in the past, but it's remarkable how much neglect a starter can go through and still be able to rise well after a few feeds. I fed my starter Friday morning, then Friday night and again Saturday morning. Admittedly I used my proofer box after the Saturday morning feed. It hadn't been fed in a few weeks. I used all the starter from the previous feeds to build up volume and had no discard. My first feed was 1:3:3 and went 12 hours, my second was the same and went for about 14 hours, my third was 1:2:3 and went for about 6 hours to a triple in volume.
It's been a long last year and my starter - Charlie - has been pretty neglected. I'm finally getting back into baking some nice bread. I didn't have any whole wheat flour in the house, so made a Tartine basic country loaf using unbleached locally milled bread flour. I used coil folds instead of stretch and folds inspired by Trevor's technique. During bulk the structure really seemed to develop well. I gave it a fourteen hour cold retard and baked it this morning. It had a beautiful oven spring - it easily doubled.
I'm constantly frustrated by any amount of left over starter. It seems so wasteful. So most of the time I simply place whatever's leftover into the jar with the rest of Charlie - my loyal starter.
This weekend I made a solstice sun twirl bread and had way too much starter left over. I had originally planed to make some other bread but our weekend plans changed and I knew I wouldn't have the time to properly deal with it. So I thought about using the starter as a biga of sorts.
