My experiments continued this morning, as I baked another dough I had frozen very recently. This was a variation of Khalid's recipe that I have made a couple of times. I really enjoy this bread as it has lots of different grains in the soaker, and it is ready to go so quickly. I defrosted the loaf yesterday in the fridge and took it out at 6 a.m.
I did another experiment. A few weeks ago, I made my first Vermont sourdough. I froze half the dough to bake later. The photo at top is the loaf I made today with the frozen dough. (The dough was frozen after bulk fermentation). I defrosted it in the refrigerator and took it out last night. It was still pretty cold (with a small frozen center), so I let it warm up and did three stretch and folds and sprayed a little water on the dough as it was stiff.
I have been wanting to try Khlaid's recipe for some time. This is a fantastic and fun bread to make. I baked one loaf yesterday, with some modifications. I made just a few changes, most notably the inclusion of cous cous rather than the coarse semolina in his original recipe. (The link to his original recipe is below). I also reduced the rye by 50 grams in the final dough and increased the bread flour, added a bit more water and used course rather than fine corn meal.
Well, I kind of screwed up today, but did my best to make up for it. When I was making the Gluten-free Farmhouse bread earlier, i prepared too much yeast because I thought I really messed up the bread dough, but it turned out that I didn't! As a result, I quickly found the most simple recipe for yeasted French bread and threw it together in minutes and baked it this afternoon. It was really good! My husband liked the crust. I could have done a much better job on the shaping, however. I'll do better next time.
I am always looking for good gluten-free recipes, and I came across this one online by Ali and Tom of Whole Life Nutrition. I did make a number of modifications to the recipe after the first time I made it, which I have listed below. It is a very dense, heavy bread and uses ground chia seeds and psyllium husk as the gluten-like substances.
Before I joined this site, I didn't realize how behind the curve I was as I had never made a Vermont Sourdough. I decided to get with it and make one today. I have been schooled by the many wonderful bakers on this site and encouraged to try, so I did. I used David's Hamelman's recipe, but altered it a bit by adding a bit more rye. I was finishing a bag of bread flour and didn't have quite enough, and I thought the additional rye would add some nice flavor.
I have been thinking about making baguettes for some time, and I finally did it, using David's recipe. I made SO many mistakes and learned a lot. I will do my best to do a better job next time. I watched videos over and over to do the proper shaping and still did a pretty poor job. I think I understand the error of my ways, so I can improve on my next attempt!
I learned a lot going through the process. It was the first time for my using a French couche cloth.
I made this tasty bread again after baking my first flax seed soaker loaf. I had frozen half the dough from my first bake as it was too much for us, and I was really interested to see how this dough would respond to being frozen and defrosted. I am always fooled by the consistency of this dough (very stiff), and I was concerned because it didn't seem to rise enough. In the end, I got good oven spring and was pleased with the result .
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