joc1954's blog

This is another experiment in preparation for bread evaluation this Friday. 15% whole grain spelt, 15% whole grain rye, 70% AP flour,  8.5% of starter from AP flour @100% hydration, allover hydration 72%. Rye and spelt grains were freshly milled at home. BF for 3.5 hours at dough temperature 28dC. After adding 2% salt after 30 minutes from initial mix I used Trevor's "stretch and scoop” method for about 8 minutes with a short brake and then S&F at 30 minute interval.

Just want to share the result of one of the experiments I have recently done.

I was testing what kind of bread I get if I take 1000g of wheat grains and mill them and then sift out only the bran. I got about 86% extraction flour. Recipe was simple: 15% mature levain from same flour, 2.5 hour BF with S&F every 30 minutes, dough temp 28dC, , divide, preshape, 30 minutes bench rest, final shape and immediate retard, baking after 8 hours direct from fridge. Seeds: crushed flax and sesame added one hour in BF,  85% hydration.

After a long time I used 100% kamut white flour for making this bread. 76% hydration,3 hour bulk ferment, divide,preshape, bench rest for 10 minutes, shape, immediate retard, baked after 16 hours.

Crumb is very soft and not too much opened, crust is just great and brings a big contrast to relatively wet crumb. I have baked this bread today for my grandchildren.

Happy baking, Joze

I am presenting at many IT conferences and other speakers know me for baking bread. Yesterday evening we had a welcome reception dinner for a conference in Bulgaria and I proposed to the organizer that I will provide all bread for the dinner.

To pair the bread with the menu I prepared 3 loaves:

- Butternut Squash bread with pumpkin seeds

- Oat porridge sourdough with flax, sunflower and sesame seeds

- Olive bread with Mediterranean spices

Every autumn we have abundance of pumpkins in our garden. Most of them are Hokkaido pumpkins which have an orange skin and more yellowish meat. I usually use Hokkaido pumpkins for preparing pumpkin soup or pumpkin gnocchi with brown butter and sage leaves (one of the recent recipes is published here with a nice video), but this year I decided to make Hokkaido pumpkin bread with SD and sage yeast water combo.

In the spirit of my latest experiments with yeast water/SD combo and because I had some wholegrain kamut flour leftover this was my last bake before a 10 days trip to San Francisco for Oracle Open World event.

Just wanted to share the results of today's baking for two afternoon parties that my wife and me will be attending.

I started to experiment with yeast water made from raisin or pears and wanted to test if it is possible to make 100% buckwheat flour bread that is actually gluten free. Buckwheat is quite popular here in Slovenia. "Ajdovi Žganci", the Slovene word for buckwheat maize porridge, is a typical Slovene food prepared by farmers. 

There are several posts on TFL for bread with cranberries but there are almost no posts using tarragon and nothing about a combination of tarragon and cranberries. In Slovenia, where I live, one of very popular national dishes (cakes) is tarragon cake ( in Slovenian language “pehtranova potica” ). In this cake, which is made for different holidays, we mostly use fresh (green) tarragon. “Potica” is made from dough typical for Italian panettone.