dmsnyder's blog

I haven't posted here for a while. I bake most weeks once or twice, usually my favorite multigrain sourdough or a Buttermilk-Spelt Sourdough. I always have some San Joaquin Sourdough baguettes available in the freezer, of course.

This week, I baked a batch of sandwich rolls made with Medium Vienna Dough from "Inside the Jewish Bakery." The plan was to have rolls for turkey sandwiches, but we use these for hamburgers, sausages and tuna salad sandwiches most often.

Some foods are great made with a variety of breads - different but all good. Some foods really call for a specific type of bread. Cracked Dungeness crab just is wrong IMO without San Francisco Sourdough. You probably have your own biases. Well, another of mine is that Cabbage Borscht is "right" only with a dark rye bread.

David

Number 2 son and his family are visiting. This is the first face-to-face family contact we have had in a year and a half. It's so nice. It's also an excuse to bake. Here's a sampling of what I've offered ...

Jewish sour rye and Berliner Landbrot

San Joaquin Sourdough Baguettes and Epis

I haven't made a miche in a very long time. Last week, I got a bag of high extraction ("Type 80") flour from Central Milling and remembered that I had previously (like 11 years ago!) used this kind of flour for a miche based on the San Francisco Baking Institute formula that I liked a lot. We had made this bread for the Artisan II (Sourdough) workshop. Although we used white flour, our instructor told us that, ideally, it would be made with a high-extraction flour. My experience indicates this formula makes delicious bead either way.

Maggie Glezer's book, "A Blessing of Bread," is a wonderful collection of Jewish baking from around the world along with a sort of ethnography of baking in the Jewish communities of the Diaspora. This book has, by my count, about 40 recipes for challah, the bread particularly associated with the Jewish sabbath. But the author also identifies the challah recipe she makes for her own family. As with most of her recipes, she provides both a commercially yeasted and a sourdough version (without saying which her family prefers).

My San Joaquin Sourdough originated in Anis Bouabsa's baguettes which had won the prize for the best baguette in Paris in 2008. Bouabsa's baguettes departed from convention in utilizing a 21 hour retardation after bulk fermentation and before dividing and shaping. Jennifer Stewart (Janedo on TFL) and I initially modified Bouabsa's formula by adding a bit of rye flour and some sourdough starter for flavor. I then omitted the commercial yeast altogether and began using the modified formula to shape as bâtards.

Buttermilk-Spelt Bread with Rye Sour

David Snyder

December, 2020

I had a quart of buttermilk in the fridge. I only needed a cup for pancakes. I hated to waste any. And I had some really nice rye sour left over from the rye breads I baked last week. And there was a newly-arrived bag of spelt berries in the pantry. So, I made Cecilia Agni Hadiyanto’s Buttermilk-Spelt Sourdough Bread using a rye sour for leavening.

I was able to get a nice photo of the "window pane" of the dough I mixed for yesterday's bake. Questions about this sign of complete gluten development come up from time to time, so I thought others might enjoy seeing this.

This is a yeasted, enriched dough. It was machine mixed in a KitchenAid Professional at speed 1 for 2 minutes. Then the salt was added, and it was mixed at speed 1 for 2 more minutes. The paddle was changed to the dough hook. Then it was mixed at Speed 2 for 9 minutes.

Multi-grain Sourdough Bread with Home-Milled Flours

David M. Snyder

November, 2020

Those who read my blog on The Fresh Loaf know that I have been experimenting with different proportions of home-milled flours over the past couple years. About a year ago, I found a mix of flours that makes breads with the most wonderful flavor. I have occasionally re-visited old favorites, but, really, this is the best of class. Of course, it is “best” to my taste. Yours may be different.

Unlike many bread that are called "Whole Wheat," the one in Peter Reinhart's "Bread Baker's Apprentice" is actually 100% whole wheat. This is a delicious bread that I have made many times but not for several years.