Cedarmountain's blog

This is a bread I made one year ago Saturday for my little sister, her favourite loaf....it was the last opportunity to bake for her, she died a few days later, March 9th, 2022 from multiple myeloma.  I miss her. 

Oat Flax Sourdough for Diane

An accumulation of small amounts of various leftover grains motivated this bake, a cracked grain sourdough bread. I had some rye berries, hard red wheat, spelt, barley and whole oats, 175 g total - coarse cracked and then soaked in 70 g hot water for two hours. The bread was made with 200g fresh milled whole wheat, sifted flour, 800g all purpose flour, 20g sea salt, 220g starter and 750g water.

This year's CSA organic grain share has arrived and it was a good harvest despite pandemic and incredible summer heat and wildfire challenges.  I received several bags of organic rye, a bag of Canadian Marquis heirloom wheat and a bag of Manitoba wheat, a cultivar of Marquis. Marquis was first developed as a cross between Red Fife, Canada's oldest wheat variety and a variety from India called Hard Red Calcutta; it combines the best traits of both parent lines and by the early 1900's was grown on over 20 million acres, about 85%of the wheat acreage in North America.

This is a variation on Chad Robertson's Oat Porridge Bread in his book Tartine 3. It is essentially the same bread but with slightly less oat porridge and the addition of some cooked whole oat berries. It is one of my favourite breads.

Ingredients

 Well, it's been almost 6 months since my last post...this pandemic thing has been occupying lots of time and energy, so much so there's little left at the end of the day for even simple, everyday things like baking bread.  I am trying to stay optimistic as things continue to unfold but admit to being more discouraged than encouraged these past few days what with the growing social unrest, ongoing disruption of the way things used to be, ever increasing pressure on front line/first responders and economic/financial hardships all around.

This is a strange and turbulent time...a viral pandemic upon us, the world in an ongoing struggle to survive and the best and worst of humanity on display every day. There is little comfort to be found anywhere as the debates, misinformation, disuptes and yes, death and suffering as a result of covid-19 fill our days.

My last blog entry was back in November 2019...right at the end of the world as we knew it.  This new way, this surreal reality with it's need for self-isolation, self-distancing, economic and social shut down under the ravages of a global pandemic is our present and our future until the hope of a vaccine/treatment is realized.  Everything is different, we struggle to adapt to the new world order and way of doing things in order to survive, fear and anxiety are the underlying emotions of the day, hope is the what keeps us going.

My first bake with this year's organic grain harvest CSA share from Cedar Isle Farm - an Oat Rye Sourdough - sprouted oats and rye, rolled oats/cracked flax soaker, sifted bran and sesame seed coating.  

This is a khorasan oat sourdough, a lighter bread than I usually bake. I wanted a light, soft crumb while still including as much fresh milled whole grain as possible. In "Tartine 3" Robertson explains how he accomplishes this by way of various additions to his basic doughs using high extraction flours, porridges, soakers, sprouted grains.  So for this bread I mixed 300 g fresh milled high extraction khorasan flour with 700 g all purpose white flour, autolysed with 750 g water for 3 hours.