JMonkey's blog

I've been teaching four hour bread classes to raise money for my daughter's school and for the food bank, and it's been amazingly fun. For each class we bake a pizza for lunch (with wine and beer if there are adults) and make a few breads. Usually a sourdough, and a couple of others as they request. I just did a class for four middle-school aged girls where we made two soudoughs, pizza, monkey bread and cinnamon rolls -- they were a fantastic group.

Anyway, tons of fun.

I've wanted to make an olive fougasse for a long, long time, but never got around to it until today. Served it for dinner along with a white bean soup that's a lot like the well-known U.S. Senate Bean Soup recipe.

Here's how I made it.

Preferment:

• 150 grams all-purpose flour
• 3 grams salt
• 97 grams water
• A pinch of instant yeast

Final dough

Desem bread is a favorite of mine, in no small part because I can only make it in the winter. But it's also beloved because it was one of the first sourdoughs I ever made, and because it comes from The Laurel's Kitchen Bread Book, a book that, though it is not without its flaws, is still a book that I love dearly and continue to bake from several times a month.

I bake bread about twice a week for my family, and these days, it's usually either a sourdough from 50% whole wheat, 10% rye and 40% AP or a loaf of Buttermilk and Honey Whole Wheat. But for whatever reason, I was craving rye yesterday, so I set up this loaf. No caraway, as I'd run out, though i do like it.

Here's how I made it:

Formula

Made a loaf of Laurel's Buttermilk Bread today and, as is typical, I simply did two bulk rises before shaping, and then did the final rise in a cooler with a cup of boiling water inside. I also reduced the liquid to about 170g water and 170g buttermilk. The difference, however, is that I completely forgot about it  after shaping and didn't remember that the bread was rising at all until it had proofed for more than 2 hours! Much longer than I ususually let it go.

I've not posted much, but I've still been baking, and I think my re-engagement with this site has encouraged me to try a few new things. Most recently, I made a variant of Jeffrey Hammelman's excellent Flaxseed Bread, which contains 60% rye. I've altered his recipe a bit, using whole rye instead of medium rye, increasing the hydration to 80% (to account for the extra absorbtion of whole rye) and used a rye starter at 100%, simply because that's how I keep mine. The recipe may be found in the handbook here.

I swear, it's just about impossible to kill a starter. I'd left my poor rye starter unfed in the fridge for at least three months, and when I opened it a couple of days ago, the top was a slimy grey with some sort of fuzzy stuff starting to take hold. But, as I often find is the case, underneath this disgusting, repulsive crust, though the starter looked tired, it also looked undamaged.

 I fed a dab of this under-crust starter a few times and it soon looked ready to make a loaf of bread. So I did -- a loaf of 40% Rye with Caraway.

MountainDog's blog entry on overnight Colombia loaves struck my fancy, so I made a single loaf for the family. What a hit with my family!