jeano's blog

Although I do have dogs, or should I say I share a house with two Canine-Americans, neither could be called a baker's apprentice, so I had to get help from Feline-American Beulah for my take on DAB's latest sorta tzitzel.

So, I threw in an unweighed glob of soaked flax seed in addition to the toasted sesame the recipe calls for. I had intended to mix the dough last evening, bulk ferment for a couple of hours and then cold proof the loaf (another ginormous boule) at bedtime, and bake in the caldera this morning. Except I completely forgot my patiently waiting levain until bedtime rolled around.

Also holes. Hammelman's whole wheat Levain, with a bit of spelt extricated from the depths of the freezer.

One of Mr Jeano's buddies expressed a wish for a loaf of sourdough, in the context of hearing another buddy was to be blessed with some rye bread. (The rye bread recipient had never eaten rye until he had some at our place). The buddy who wants sourdough commented his wife had gotten some at the grocery store and he'd really enjoyed it for sandwiches. (I will bet you almost any amount of money their local grocery doesn't carry unbleached flour, let alone bake any quasi-artisan bread).

Eric's formula calls for neither a bold bake, nor making a ginormous boule instead of two smaller ovals, but I have been using my immense IMUSA caldera for big miche-like loaves for a while and couldn't resist giving an excellent deli rye a Forkish twist.

I decided to fool around a little with the 80%biga recipe from FWSY. Used 50g of my 100% sourdough starter to build the 800g biga, subbed in 25g each of WW and whole rye instead of using all white flour, and despite the whole grain flours ended up with dough so slack that my nerve broke and I added another 21g of AP during the mix. Oh, and in a further departure from protocol all the mixing was done in a Bosch universal. Gave it a lot of stretch and folds in the bowl during the bulk ferment.