ifs201's blog

I copied this recipe from Danni . Following her comments I increased the amount of cornmeal, but otherwise I pretty much followed exactly. My apartment was hot and humid (NYC summers!) so I reduced I lot of the fermentation times. 

at 7:30am I poured 220g of boiling water on 120g of coarse cornmeal and at the same time I built my levain of 33g starter, 33g rye, 66g whole wheat, and 66g cold water (my apartment was about 82 degrees). 

I just tried my first recipe from Sourdough by Sarah Owens. I used the Sweet Potato Levain recipe and doubled it, but substituted canned pumpkin for sweet potato. The recipe used 300g leaven, 680g water, 360g pumpkin puree, 20g molasses, 900g bread flour, 240g whole wheat flour, 60g rye, and 24g sea salt.

At 10pm the night before the bake I built the levain.

For my second sourdough loaf I tried this awesome recipe:

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/59838/stout-and-2year-old-white-cheddar-sourdough-oats

I followed it pretty exactly, but added caramelized onions and 1/4 tsp instant yeast. I still want to work on getting a slightly better oven spring and more open crumb, but it tasted amazing! I'm still trying to figure out if I am over proofing, under proofing, or not developing the gluten enough.

This was my first attempt at the FWSY 80% biga. As usual I made the dough using 25% whole wheat, I reduced the water temperature given the temperature of my apartment, and slightly reduced the proofing time. Given the lack of oven spring and tighter crumb structure, maybe I should reduce the proof time further? It tasted good, but definitely room for improvement. Is a good rule of thumbs for FWSY to end the bulk ferment when the dough is 2x the original volume? 

I am a sucker for fruit breads and decided to try this one. I would highly recommend this recipe, but I had a real issue getting the fruit to be well-dispersed. All of the fruit seem to be on the very top of the loaf which was frustrating. I didn't have fresh yeast so I used 1/2 tsp of instant and then 1/3 cup of fed sourdough starter. I put 5g of starter in the overnight pre-ferment and the rest when I mixed the dough the next day. I decided to make 2 smaller loaves. 

I got a copy of FWSY a few weeks ago and this was my first attempt at making a levain. My previous 3 efforts all used biga or poolish pre-ferment. I stuck to the recipe, but reduced the proof times somewhat given recommendations on this site and the temperature of my apartment (about 82 degrees). I also used about 75 degree water instead of the 90 degrees recommended since my home was warm. I also reduced the amount of instant yeast from the recommended 1/2 tsp to 1/4 tsp and increased the amount of whole wheat flour to 20% of the total flour used.

This was my second attempt at making bread. I replaced 20% of the four with whole wheat. I had trouble getting the bread to split naturally during the bake. 

This was my first attempt at making bread