Lazy Loafer's blog

I have a profusion of rhubarb (and other things, but that's another story) from the garden right now, so I've been canning and preserving. Yesterday I made a batch of sweet pickle relish and another of rhubarb chutney. I've been thinking of how to use rhubarb in bread, so I decided to do a test loaf of sourdough ('cause, I had, like, nothing else to do, right?) with some of the chutney ingredients.

I started with my go-to formula when I'm testing ingredients rather than technique or formula - a simple 1-2-3 country sourdough.

I don't bake a lot of gluten free bread, but I've got a couple of regular GF customers that I bake for weekly. Usually I bake a nice Olive bread and GF "Not Rye" (sort of a deli rye style). I use recipes from Bread in 5 Minutes a Day (Healthy Bread in 5M and Gluten Free Bread in 5M).

I really like making porridge breads - they allow the flavour of whatever grain is in the porridge while keeping the texture of a nice wheat-based sourdough. Creamy, moist, chewy and with a nice crust. I especially like using rye flakes this way as rye flour can be notoriously difficult to work with and really changes the texture of the bread.

Back home now, with all my baking equipment, so I thought I'd re-create the no-measure bread I made on holiday last week, only measuring stuff this time so I could bake it again, and scale it for different sized batches. The original adventure is recorded in my blog post here.

This time, just for something a bit different, I made the poolish with white whole wheat flour. It's 100% hydration, 100 grams each of flour and water and about 1/4 tsp of active dry yeast.

Well, we're on holidays again. I usually try to bake at least once during any week that we're away, and have to make do with whatever equipment is available. We're at our usual resort (nice units, good kitchens but a little dated now) and I was expecting a certain number of baking items to be available. Alas, it was not to be!

I did another bake of FWSY Overnight White again today, with a couple of differences. One was caused by scheduling difficulties, the other by absent-mindedness! But at least they show that I feel I now have enough experience as a baker to make changes and still feel confident of the results!

Today was the first day I really had time to start playing with the new Ankarsrum mixer. I had a small (four loaves) batch of multigrain sandwich dough to make, and we're out of bagels. That sounded like a fair test to start with! I did make a small batch of 50% whole wheat pizza dough on the weekend which was also a pretty good test of a small amount of wet dough. It handled it quite well, using the dough hook and scraper. Oh yes, and I made two batches (2 loaves each) of gluten free 'dough' using the plastic bowl and cookie dough whips. That was awesome. :)

Okay, okay, I know it's not bread, but today's experimenting touches on a couple of interests to do with my bread baking. One, I'm trying out the new Ankarsrum mixer in all kinds of different ways, and two, I bought a bag of durum atta flour to play around with. And as we needed something for dinner tonight, and the garden is starting to produce a few things, I thought I'd make pasta!

I baked a batch of six Sunflower Flaxseed Levains from Tartine 3 this morning. I made the dough last night and let it sit in the basement (my version of 'cellar temperature') overnight, then shaped it and proofed in baskets this morning. It proofs a lot more quickly than the five hours Robertson recommends so I had to have the oven and the cast iron pots hot and ready. The dough was quite sticky this morning but stretchy, and it shaped well into boules. These were 750 grams (wet dough weight) boules, baked in 3 quart pots. Turned out very nice!

Many of you will be familiar with different versions of Peter Reinhart's Struan, a multigrain sandwich bread that he seems to have a version of in each of his books. I have often made the version from "Artisan Breads Every Day" and my customers (and I!) find it very tasty. I make it quite a bit.