IceDemeter's blog

I'm mostly down to one crutch or a cane, and moving around better, so thought that it would be a good week to re-stock the freezer with my husband's favourite (the oat kamut rolls from http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/52425/catching-myself-oat-kamut-rolls-july-7), and a variation on my own favourite, which is 100% rye.

Even though I have enough bread in stock to get us through the long weekend, I have been mighty restless with the enforced rest caused by my sprained foot.  I knew that I didn't feel safe with juggling the high temps for loaves while on crutches, but that stunning front page display from isand66 got me wondering about making some rolls...

With that in the back of my mind, I noticed that I had some pumpkin puree hanging out in my freezer for a while, so that image joined in with the rolls idea...

With the forecast for cooler temps and a plan in place for a comfortably paced bake, I naturally had to find some ways to mess with it...

This is how it really works in my kitchen:

LEVAIN:

A couple of days in advance, pull out 10g of 65% hydration rye starter from fridge, feed with 40g / 40g, be concerned that it takes over 10 hours to do anything, and decide to

a) refresh the main rye starter since it obviously is getting low on yeast, and

b) refresh the durum starter just in case it is getting too acidic and low on yeast, too, and

While it's not my husband's favourite, I definitely have a soft spot for a 100% whole "wheat" bread.  I use the loose definition of "wheat" to include spelt, khorasan (Kamut), durum, and the modern hard red and soft white varieties, and like to mix them up for their various flavours and what they bring to the dough.

My "wheat" starter is durum, so I built the levain entirely with fresh milled whole durum, using the really warm days leading up to my planned bake day.  I didn't plan on needing much, since this was to be a smaller loaf, mostly for myself.

With the freezer stock down to a few rolls, a couple of slices of pumpernickel, and some milk bread, I was more than happy to see that the forecast for the 28th was for 21 deg C, with clouds and showers.  We don't have air conditioning, and heating the oven to 240 deg C or higher for multiple hours leaves the main floor unbearable when the outside temps are in the 30's, as they had been for too many days.  With hopes for a day where I could bake semi-comfortably, I pulled out some of my durum and rye main starters and started building some levains.  The plan was for a large p

While reading a post from Bread Kneading http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/52316/bread-always-cracks-one-side-and-gummy-centre about an adaptation to an Hokkaido Milk Bread recipe with Tang Zhong, I started wondering how I could do with that style of bake, and what it would taste like.  I had never done a loaf using ADY, or really tried an enriched version (other than some dried milk powder), and thought that this might be a great opportunity to give it a go. 

Time is flying by me again, but I'm using this blog to keep track of my bakes, so I really need to spend a few minutes catching up with myself!

In my blog last week I mentioned that I had the levains all ready to go and was frightfully confident that the dough would be cooperative with my intention of a relaxing mix day...

Well - the weather decided to go in to random mode, and we had storm fronts rolling in from all directions fighting with high pressure fronts that thought we should be clear and sunny instead.  It's a lousy shot (I'm a lousy photographer), but here's one of the cloud fronts traveling by:

It's been a crazy month of chores at the farms, a couple of multi-day cross-country trips for family events, an unexpected minor surgery, and all of the usual stuff that we all deal with.  As we all know, there truly are not enough hours in the day, and sometimes something just has to be neglected...