leslieruf's blog

At the end of July I finally gave in to temptation and ordered a new oven.  I settled on a 13 Function Bosch (not sure if I will ever use all of them!) and finally a week ago it was installed.

For this bake I just played around with some seeds - didn't want a heavy loaf so it was

Bread flour 80%, Wholewheat flour 15%, rye flour 5%, 80% hydration and salt at 2%.  I adjusted the flour to include 0.05% diastatic malt.  To this I added

Chia seed 4%, sesame seed 5%, flaxseed 5% sunflower seed 5% and pumpkin seed 5%. 

Method:

Well I couldn’t resist because I love kamut & durum bread. I often add spelt but not this time. And obviously not a baguette

I made sure my starter was really active before I started. 
Bread flour 62.2%
kamut flour 40%
durum 7.8% (all I had left)

water 80%
salt 1,8%

After Covid19 lockdown I was gifted 4 kg of flour and suddenly my bread improved greatly.  Now I am running low and so I went on line and ordered 10 kg, crossing my fingers that I had chosen the right flour.  Todays bake was a straight up white 1:2:3 with each flour. I added a little diastatic malt to help with caramelisation.

Method:

Reading through some of the Baguette CB posts I noticed that alfanso had made Hamelman's Sourdough Seeded Bread and when I was deciding what to make this week I decided to have a go at this.  

Monday I refreshed my starter and then before I went to bed I mixed up the soaker & the levain

Soaker: 27 g flaxseed & 81 g room temperature water. Covered and left overnight

Levain: 12 g starter + 73 g water + 57 g flour mixed, covered and left overnight. 

Not baking so much but love the combination of Kamut & spelt so this weekend did a repeat of an earlier bake where I had pushed the Kamut to 50% with close to 80% hydration.  

Starter was refreshed on Friday morning and so before bed I built the levain. 13 g starter + 60 g water + 60 g bread flour

Saturday at 9:15 am autolyse for 30 minutes

Just as well we have our starters!  

So my isolation bubble shrunk a week ago when Swiss family members could finally catch a flight home.  So I baked last week, an ok bake but I am having trouble getting decent oven spring.  This week I thought, ok try the other flour, a different supermarket brand that a friend had dropped off. Secondly, have yet another go at baking in my hooded BBQ.

So, Bread #1 - a simple mixed flour loaf with 14% kamut, 10% homemilled spelt and 10% home milled rye and 84% hydration.

well this week when I told a friend I would make Pane Bianco, the reply was oohh - a pull apart bread!  Actually that would be better so I followed this recipe from King Arthur Flour.  https://www.kingarthurflour.com/recipes/pane-bianco-recipe

After my first attempt to bake bread in my hooded BBQ I had several issues to address.  Most critical was the fact that the gas hose had touched the body of the grill and partially melted! So I ordered a new one and a second grate.  These arrived this week so yesterday I repeated the previous bake, substituting rye for spelt.

12 December - refresh starter and build levain before going to bed

13 December

08:25 am autolyse 105 g freshly milled whole wheat, 50 g freshly milled rye 440 g flour + 10 g gluten flour and 400 g water.

Well today I made a simple 1:2:3 loaf with some wholewheat (17%) and spelt (8%). my objective - test baking in my new BBQ instead of in the oven over summer.  Just a standard 123 with a little extra water, 4 sets of coil folds.

here is my set up

I started out to make Ru's seeded sourdough which I love.  I ran out of levain (didn't calculate properly) so added in the left over from the first refreshment of the refrigerated starter.  I am not sure how much water I added to it to thin it from 66% hydration - a dumb move as it was quite thin when I used it. 

12 midday - toasted 15 g chia seed, 37 g sesame seed and 22 g flaxseed. I had blitzed sesame and flaxseed a little in the coffee grinder. I then added 55 g water but it sucked it all up so I added another 55 g water and left to soak.