leslieruf's blog

It was absolutely bucketing down and as we had been warned of the approaching storm I decided to make yesterday a bake day.  Refreshed Yeast water and levain on Saturday and made initial builds of levain and left overnight.  It is winter and so things are moving a bit slowly.

First off the rank was a repeat of Abe’s Swiss Farmhouse bread.  I followed the recipe here

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/56266/swiss-farmhouse-bread-using-raspberry-yw

I was so very happy to see Ru back with us that I decided to make her Toasted Oat Sourdough.  I started of with a hiss and a roar and then decided I should check the recipe (alway dodgy to trust memory these days.)  

Wednesday evening I milled the whole wheat berries and rye berries that I would need for this recipe.  I sifted the wheat flour to get the bran. 

Levain Build (wednesday evening)

25 g refreshed starter + 105 g flour + 28 g bran + 106 g water. Mix and leave overnight on bench.

Soaker (Thursday morning)

Loved this one that Danni had posted  http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/56209/european-peasant-loaf-take-2

So this was the third loaf that I made this week.  I scaled Danni's formula down as I only wanted to make one loaf.

Monday: refreshed starter and then built 100% levain and left to ripen.  8 pm built the final levain for dough using all bran I had sifted out plus some flour to give me enough flour and left at room temperature overnight

Well I have never used Kamut and managed to find a 400 g packet at a local organic store - it was very pricey!

I milled the kamut and very quickly found it was different to rye spelt or wholewheat and it jammed my mill very quickly.  Panic!! hubby managed to free it up and after I removed the berry causing the issue, I carefully carried on, only to do it again.  This time I could fix it, but proceed very carefully and slowly feeding it through.   I made 2 x 350 gram boules so it is not a big bake.  I have learnt a few things for the next bake.

Abe posted this bread, it looked great, and because hubby is Swiss I just had to have a go.  I used my existing Raspberry yeast water instead of building a new raisin yest water as in the recipe.

I wanted to have a go at making a porridge bread using Bob's Red Mill 6 grain + flaxseed hot cereal mix.  I added some barley flakes and some wholewheat flour, freshly milled.

Levain: 86 g @ 100% hydration built the day before, with the final build having some bran included. It was left to mature overnight.

DanAyo"s recent post prompted a response by Trevor Wilson.

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/56018/acedic-vs-lactic-flavor

So time to give this a shot, see if I could do a long warm fermentation such as Trevor suggested without the dough degrading and see what effect it has on flavour.

Sunday morning:  Refresh my mother starter (basically a 1:2:3)  which lives in the fridge. 

Sunday evening: Refresh again keeping to this ratio, making a bit more than I required.

The holiday is over.  It was an awesome 3 week trip to our South Island incorporating a 7 day adventure of 4WD in back country, catching up with relations and exploring parts of the country I had never seen before. 

Yesterday was the last day to top up bread for the next week plus leave some in  the freezer for when we return.

So Sunday overnight refreshed the starter, then Monday made 2 builds, converting it to 100% hydration and using bran for the 2nd build.  2nd & 3rd builds combined as we were going to be out until evening.  Before going to bed built the levains required for my bake.

Hamelman"s 5 grain Levain (pictured)

Soaker

Flaxseed 62 g

cracked rye 62 g

sunflower seed 52 g

Rolled oats 52 g

After recent bakes I have been a bit disheartened. Earlier this week I got the Red Star Yeast newsletter and they featured “Unbelievable Sweet Orange rolls” - a variation on cinamon rolls.  I followed the recipe exactly (I made a slightly bigger dough and had to bake some rolls seperately) and whilst mine wasn’t as pretty as theirs, it went down a treat with friends tonight. it feels good to have a sucess and the taste was really nice - a combination of orange and cinamon.  yum!

Happy baker tonight

Leslie