I'm not too picky about flour. In general, I pick the lowest cost unbleached bread flour I can find (for what it's worth, this is almost always White Lilly High Protein Bread Flour, which runs about $0.50/pound). If I can find King Arthur Flour for a reasonable price, I will buy it. In my area, most stores have it for around $0.80/pound -- not too shabby.
My new go-to loaf is Hamelman's light rye. I leave out the caraway seeds (never aquired a taste) and use whole rye.
This week, my baking schedule was thrown off, so I had to improvise. Hamelman's recipe calls for an 18-hour sourdough starter, a 1-hour bulk fermentation, and a 1-hour proof before baking. Due to time constraints, I had to put the dough in the fridge overnight after shaping.
It's been a long time since I've posted on The Fresh Loaf. The last several years have seen many changes in our lives, the primary one being that we chose to go "car free" back in December. Doing this is challenging, but not impossible in our hometown of Louisville, KY. While friends and family suggested that we just move on to more "bike friendly" cities (perhaps they're just trying to get rid of us and they figure Portland is as far from Kentucky as one can get), we decided to stick it out in Derby City.
Pain Rustique with Whole Wheat
The inspiration for this formula derives from Hamelman's Pain Rustique, which is a high hydration dough made with a commercial yeast poolish. The crumb is very open and moist, much like a ciabatta, perfect for dipping in olive oil.
A few weeks ago, I posted a question about using soft winter wheat for baking artisan bread. Here's the brief story. My wife and I are somewhat passionate about local food. Since we can only grow soft wheat here in Kentucky, I always assumed that I would have to buy flour milled from wheat grown in Kansas or the Northern Plains.
Fast forward to Monday when I was at the market and saw this:
Following closely in the footsteps of Hans, I baked Hamelman's "Whole-Wheat Levain" this morning:
For the last few weeks, I have moved away from sourdough levain to straightforward yeast recipes. However, this weekend, I decided to revive my starter and try out something new: Eric's Favorite Rye (ici: http://tinyurl.com/d4v344).
