jsk's blog

A couple of weeks ago i got that feeling in my stomach that I have to bake bread again. I used to bake quite a bit until six months ago and I felt it is the time to start baking again. For this I had to create a new sourdough starter as I sadly found my old one molding in the back of the fridge. I started it with some rye flour and water and converted it gradually to a white flour stater. When it was active and vigorous enogh. I decided to bake with it. I chose to try David's San Joaquin, wich I've been wanting to try for a long time.  

I have been been experimenting with rye during my past few bakes and this week I made Hamleman's rye bread with flasxseeds (wich I first saw in hansjoakim's post here). The recipe is from the site Modern Baking and you can find a reduced recipe in David's post about it. I have also made the bread as a 1 kg boule, like david did.

I really wanted to try once a 100% rye recipe- a dense, moist, delicious bread that I love eating in my trips to europe (not the sponge like clorored stuff they sell in the stores). I decided to give Hamelman Vollkornbrot a try.

I've tweaked the recipe just a bit as I changed the rye chops to cracked rye and I had only 7 oz of it (I've add the rest as rye flour).

Fot quite a while now I was working with whole grain doughs producing flavorful breads with strong aromas from the various flours. A few days ago I decided to bake a proper baguette after seeing the beautiful baguettes you TFL members are showing here.

A few nights ago I made the rye with sunflower seeds from Hamelman's "Bread". Its is a 33% rye with 80% hydration (the rye includes a cracked rye soaker). The day I made the dough I immediately saw it was very very wet but I let it work in the mixer so I let it work in the mixer for 10-12 minutes instead of the 5 that Hamelman says. A huge mistake! The dough was over kneaded and like over kneaded rye dough, it went from wet and sticky to extremly wet and sticky!