Danni3ll3's blog

Amaranth/sesame on left, bulgur on right. 

This week I decided to go back to my roots in bread baking by baking the Overnight Country Brown recipe out of FWSY.  Of course, I had to put in a few add ins. Two of the loaves got a total of 100 g of bulgur soaked in 100 g of water and the other two got 100 g of sprouted amaranth (24 hours) and 25 g of black sesame seeds. I added the add ins at the autolyse stage but otherwise followed the recipe as written in the book. 

Cornmeal Mush

150g  cornmeal
30g butter
60g honey
250g milk

Dough

500g unbleached flour (I put in 150 g high extraction flour for part of the 500 g)
1¼tsp instant yeast 
10g salt
150g water

Glaze

1 egg
1tsp water
pinch of salt
pinch of sugar
cornmeal

Makes 18 buns

1. Heat milk until almost boiling and pour over the rest of the ingredients for the cornmeal mush. Cool until just warm.

I decided to document in pictures all the steps I use in making sourdough boules for future posters or even lurkers that might be wondering how does one go from a recipe to the actual loaf of bread. I am no expert having only been baking just under a year but I thought it would be fun to do.

Since I was focusing on baguettes this weekend, I decided to do a redo of the Kamut Sourdough from last weekend but slightly changed it by increasing the Kamut.

This makes 3 loaves. 

1. Build up to 450 grams of rye/unbleached flour levain in two stages over 24 hour. 

2. Dissolve all of levain in 900 g warm water and add 800 g unbleached flour, 300 g Kamut, 200 g whole grain whole wheat and 50 g dark rye. 

3. Let sit for one hour (Not a true autolyse) in a warm spot. 

4. Pinch and fold in 32 g sea salt. 

A while ago, I had asked for baguette help and Alfanso was kind enough to share three formulas.  My mom had knee surgery almost 3 weeks ago and being French, she loves baguettes. Does she want my other bread? No! She wants baguettes.

So I went back to Alfanso's post and made the first formula. Of course, mine are nowhere near as pretty as his but they still thrilled my mom. 

I followed the recipe as posted below aside from sneaking in 25 grams of wholewheat and 25 g of dark rye. Here is the link: 

Since I had some levain left over from my other bakes and I hate throwing good stuff out, I weighed it and decided that 125 g was enough for a 1-2-3 loaf. 

I just threw all of the following stuff together, no autolyse, into a bowl and right into fermentation:

125 g half rye, half AP levain

250 g warm water

200 g unbleached flour 

120 g white wholewheat 

55 g kamut

7 g salt

My pottery instructor gave me some of her organic apples so I dehydrated them in the hopes of making bread with them. So surfing TFL, I found DAB's Apple Prune Bread and took my inspiration from that. 

I soaked separately 150 g dried cranberries and 50 g dried Apple bits. I toasted 50 g walnuts, 20g chia seeds and 20 g flax seeds. After a whirl in the mini chopper, the chia seeds were soaked in 60 g water and the flax in 40 g water. 

I am super pleased with the oven spring on this one. This is a variation of Tartine 3's Flax Sunflower Bread. 

I toasted 140 g of sunflower seeds and 140 g of flax seeds. I gave the flax a whirl in my mini chopper and then soaked them overnight in 180 g of water. 

In the middle of baking these loaves last night, I was rudely interrupted by a skunk who decided that hanging around the pen of our two dogs in the backyard, was a good idea. I had the chinchillas out of their cages for a run and was heating up the oven to bake when I smelled that lovely odour of "Eau de Pepe le Pew". I ran out to grab the dogs, hoping against hope, that our streak of luck of skunks staying out of our yard continued. Well, the luck ran out.

The story is going to be told in pictures today. ;-)

The only changes were that I added 50 g of liquid and subbed out 100 of water for buttermilk.