Whew, it's been a while since my last post! I've been busy opening a brewery,
I went up to Skowhegan, ME for the Kneading Conference this year, in part to learn about using more local grains in my beer, and part to take the home baker's course. It rekindled my fire for bread, and I've been baking up a storm.
More loaves from the excellent Bread Alone. Click any picture to biggify it.
This time I adulterated the sourdough rye to add whole wheat berries and cracked wheat. I soaked the wheat berries overnight in leftover whey from making ricotta the day before.
First order of business, of course, is feeding my starter the day before to get it ready. Saturday morning I fed it:
While cleaning up some of my brewing equipment, I noticed the water getting colder and colder. Out of propane! I called the company, took Monday off to wait for the guy, then decided it'd be a great excuse for some sourdough!
I refreshed my starter with some locally grown and milled whole wheat bread flour. I decided to do the basic Pain au Levain in Bread Alone, with the addition of a bunch of fresh rosemary I had in the fridge.
I've been looking to branch out with the grains I use in my breads. Flipping through Bread Alone, I found a recipe for wheat bread with whole wheat berries. A friend just happened to have a jar of wheat berries on hand, so I was in business!
First things first: soak the wheat berries overnight.
I helped a good friend plan a New Year's Eve party. We went with a Persian theme. When she suggested lavash, I was excited to give it a try. She broke out Food of Life and we found a recipe. There were two given: one was (heavily) enriched with butter and milk, the other was lean; it's basically French bread dough with sugar. We decided on the lean version.
The 100% rye was a completely different animal. Using a combination of white and medium rye flours, the dough was really strange and plastic--more like working with soft modeling clay than bread dough. Being the first time I'd done this, I just trusted the recipe and hoped for the best.
Rises were long, probably owing to the cool temps in the kitchen. The first rise was around 5 hours, the second almost 3. It came out of the brotform still fairly dense and heavy for its size.
So I thought I'd test 'em out with some sourdough! You may have seen a previous post I made (which probably should have been a blog post) about getting back into sourdough. I'm going to break this into two posts because of all the pictures.
I ran myself right out of bread flour today :)
First we have some poppyseed "bloomers." Last time I followed the recipe to make one loaf and it was gigantic! This time I broke it in two.
To bring to dinner at my brother's house today, I made a pile of grissini. These are super easy to make and very tasty, what with the extra virgin olive oil and rosemary in them.
My sourdough techniques have really come a long way. This weekend's loaf was far and away the best I've made. Delicious, sour, great crumb and texture, it had it all. I used about 25% whole wheat flour.
So what's for dinner? Turkey bacon lightly fried in a skillet then put on top of tangy Greek grilling cheese on my fresh sourdough. The whole sandwich goes back on the skillet and a hot cast iron skillet is put on top to press it down. Some green beans lightly sautee'd with garlic and extra virgin olive oil, and some garlic dill pickles to round it out.
