Danni3ll3's blog

I took my inspiration for this loaf here. I changed it slightly and used my usual way of making bread but I was not aware that cinnamon impeded the yeast action! My bulk rise took 9 hours at cool room temperature! I never did get the dough to double but it rose to about half again the original volume. After shaping and putting it in bannetons, I let the loaves rise for an hour on the counter before putting them in the fridge for the night.

I saw MutantSpace's loaf from a question he/she asked and loved the look of the crumb. I do plan to make it as posted but I needed a few loaves this weekend and thought I would just adapt it to sourdough. I think I may have messed up in the salt though and not put enough in. I will know when we taste it.

This recipe made 4 quite small loaves although you could divide it 3 for larger loaves. I wasn't sure that the larger loaves would fit in my Dutch ovens and I wasn't making any for sale so the smaller loaves were just fine. 

This is a repeat of one of the multigrain breads from last week. I changed the method a bit but the recipe, aside from the water amounts, is the same. For some reason, the bread this week needed quite a bit more water than last week. I guess this reinforces the adage to be conservative in the hydration and adjust as needed.

Since I was on a roll making bread, I thought I would make a simple loaf with just flour and no add-ins. The plan was to have a couple of these loaves as testers for baking in the portable pizza oven that one of my brothers made for us.

So here goes:

I have been away from baking due to an unexpected work commitment. After 6 and half weeks, I couldn't settle on what to make so I decided to make one multigrain flour mix and try different add-ins. It was interesting to see how the add-ins affected the hydration of the dough.

Basic Multigrain Mix

This is the last bake that I am making for sale until I am back to being retired so I am super happy how it turned out in spite of a few hiccups. I am not sure how much bread I will be making for us so it might also be a while for that too. We will see. Might have to stick to one day recipes...

Anyhow, this is the recipe:

1. Soak 30 g each of cranberries, raisins & chopped dates in 100 g Earl Grey tea. Cool and add 30 g of kefir. 

2. I didn't do this but the plan was to toast 25 g each of walnuts, pecans and pumpkin seeds. 

My bread baking over the Easter weekend was a disaster! I baked the loaves I was making too soon; I panicked when I saw how quickly they were rising in the fridge so I baked them that evening instead of waiting till the next morning. They didn't have great oven spring at all.

Then I was making cornmeal buns for dinner and I managed to burn the bottoms of all of them. My daughter came to the rescue and made Prospector Buns which were awesome!

I love my combo starter! It is a blend of Duluth's Best Bread (Michaellily), JamieOF and mine. The thing doubles in 2 hours and triples in four when I do my final levain build. The boules are full and have almost a balloon quality when I take them out of the fridge to bake.

This week, I think the boules actually hit the lids of the Dutch ovens because they are a bit flat on top. The loaves feel really light so I think the crumb should be pretty good. 

I really enjoy using multigrain cereal in bread and thought I would combine it with some rye sprouts. So here goes:

1. Sprout 75 g of rye berries. This took 3 days.

2. Toast 75 g of Bob's Red Mill 10 grain cereal and soak overnight in 140 g of boiling water. The next morning, stir in 30 g of kefir and let sit for a few hours.

3. Autolyse all of the above with 650 g water, 550 g no additives unbleached flour, 202 g white whole wheat flour, 100 g fresh milled red fife flour and 100 g Robin Hood Multigrain Best for Bread flour. Let sit for approximately one hour.

Like the title says, the weekend loaf was so good, we were out of bread by Tuesday. And since I had some levain left over that I had kept (I was thinking of making sourdough cinnamon rolls with it), it was conscripted to become a loaf to fill in the gap. 

This is not my normal routine for making bread but it still worked. No idea what the crumb looks like yet. It could be pretty interesting.

So here goes:

1. Toast 50 g of bulgur and 25 g of amaranth. Soak in 150 g boiling water and let cool until just warm.