BurntMyFingers's blog

I usually sprinkle potenta in the bottom of the pot when I'm baking in a dutch oven, but the other day I was out. What about Kosher salt, I wondered: similar size and shape. I was also tempted by a concern my dough was a bit under salted, as I discovered after the final mix.

Result was excellent. Bread didn't stick and the bottom of the loaf had a nice salty crunch. Will do this again and you should try it too!

This was one of the most flavorful and nurturing loaves I've baked in a long time. I started with the recipe on page 192 of Tartine Book No 3 but used a flaked 5 grain cereal from a local store in place of the oats. I inoculated a porridge of 250 g water and 250 g grain with 1 T leaven and forgot about it for a week, at the end of which time it had an inviting sweet smell.

This weekend I ended up with some of the best olive bread I've ever tasted, through a completely accidental process.

The first accident was that I needed to refresh a neglected rye starter. I made a whole lot of it then, rather than throwing out the excess, I mixed it with some all purpose flour. The proportions were 225 g rye starter at 100% hydration, 500 g all purpose flour, 350 g water and 1 1/2 t Kosher salt. After bulk proofing I tossed the dough in the refrigerator for a couple days because I like my bread really sour.

The other day I made Rene's Rye from the recently released Tartine 3. The primary flour is spelt, combined with sprouted rye.  I have a sprouter I use for salad sprouts and was able to get nice shoots on my rye berries in less than 2 days. The recipe also requires buttermilk (the taste is pronounced, so use a good one), malt syrup and dark beer (I substituted maple syrup and a hoppy IPA) and a variety of seeds.

Can you partially bake a sourdough baguette, then finish it at a later time of your choosing? That's what this experiment aims to find out. I made my standard dough which is based on Maggie Glezer’s Acme recipe, but substituting levain for yeast. Loaves went in the oven at 520 degrees, then steamed and lowered heat to 480 degrees. One loaf was removed at about 20 minutes, or as soon as it started to color (times are relative and will depend on your own oven); the second at about 30 minutes so it was brown but not dark; the third stayed in till 40 minutes for a full dark bake.

I had a wonderful dinner at Bar Tartine in San Francisco last week. I knew they were doing things with koji and tried a steak tartare served on koji toast but there were so many flavors going on I couldn’t really focus on the koji.

I have been having difficulty overproofing my baguettes, so today I tried an experiment. I shaped three similar, though not quite identical, baguettes then baked them one after another, 27 minutes apart. You can see the results here, with the last bake on the left and the first on the right.

For my second miche taste test I wanted to do two things: compare King Arthur High-Extraction flour against Central Milling Type 85 Malted, and experiment with a smaller loaf after the comment from one of my tasters that the first loaf was "gummy" (though he ended up liking that loaf the best.) Above is a closeup of the result, with the Central Milling loaf on the left.

Last week I did a three-way miche taste test, with the same formula using three different flours: King Arthur High Extraction, King Arthur First Clear, and a blend of 60% KA Bread Flour/40% KA Whole Wheat Flour. Here are what the loaves looked like:

Clockwise from the top they are First Clear, Hi-X and the hybrid.

A well-intention friend gifted me with 10 pounds of supermarket flour as a thank you for making them bread, and I'm wondering what to do with it. It's Baker's Corner brand APF from Aldi's, bleached, 10% protein. I'm interested in the challenge of making excellent bread or baked goods from processed flour. Any suggestions?