Ok, so they didn't turn out as pretty as I was hoping: (but see how I took them into natural lighting for you :))
Clearly, I had no plan for shaping them, but i wanted to try without a basket this time because I wanted longer loaves than I have baskets. The smaller looking one turned out better. I haven't cut them yet, but I gave the better looking one to my neighbor so no crumb shot of that one.
are really hard. Wow. Just attempted them. Maybe I shouldn't have tried something challenging with my first ever effort at a poolish, too. They aren't baked yet, but they look pretty terrible. I added extra flour to the dough and it was still ridiculously soft and wet. I was using the poolish baguette formula from Hamelmn's "Bread". I think I will have to give it another go...but now I am even more apprehensive than before.
Ok, I know pretty much everyone here has made this bread before...but here I am posting another. This isn't my best loaf so far but I just decided to post it anyway because I am pretty excited about this recipe. (Please ignore the sad, sad scoring job :))
I did bake a lot of bread in the past week, but nothing impressive...not sure what my problem was. The weather was a lot cooler so I did have to play around with the proofing times but nothing was really right. I did make sourdough rye with light rye flour yesterday, which was my first experience using any rye other than whole rye. I was pleased with that but I got a little carried away with the seeds in it. I liked it but I think i would have to tone it down for others. Today I made bagels.
Here is the pizza I made for my friend's birthday! The crust is pretty much just a modified basic sourdough from BBA, with semolina. I topped it with homemade pesto, fresh mozzarella, cherry tomatoes and red onions. It turned out pretty delicious! :)
Today I made the basic sourdough from BBA with 50% semolina. I also did an extremely long autolyse and increased the hydration about 1 oz.
The dough was pretty hard to handle so i was not thrilled with my shaping job, but the crumb turned out pretty well.
Ok...so I might have been a little carried away while playing around with hydration. This was actually a normal looking proofed loaf a few seconds before I attempted to score it, and got it stuck to the counter, and got it stuck to my arm, when I opened the oven and there was an unruly oven rack in the way. Anyway, hopefully the crumb makes up for this silly crust. The second loaf is still circular at least!
Well, here they are..the results of my "bread day". Not perfect, especially the scoring, but hopefully an fun gift for someone who doesn't really bake. They are all based on the basic sourdough recipe in BBA. I replaced 25%-33% of the flour with rye, spelt, or semolina, and increased the hydration by about 1 oz.. I also proofed these a little longer than called for, about an extra hour total, as it is only about 67 degrees here, inside and out.
The finished loaves. The three you can see in this picture are the semolina loaves, which I think turned out the best.
I was wondering what that burning smell was when I tried to preheat the oven...I couldn't find anything! But then, up in the back corner, I found the basket of bread I had put in there (cold!) to proof. In my defense, I am making 9 loaves so there was a lot to keep track of! Anyway, I have been meaning to start a blog here, and I had a whole long introduction planned out, but I think this says it better: Overachiever messes up in a REALLY dumb way. :)
