linder's blog

Today we baked some more San Joaquin Sourdough in the Dutch oven over charcoal.  This time I upped the whole wheat to 300 grams, added 10 grams of water to the initial mix and used pumpernickel flour in place of the dark rye.  One glitch in transfer to the pot was my handkerchief flour lined bread bowl wasn't floured enough so the bread stuck to the kerchief, but a quick whack with the bread knife/lame took care of it. 

Heating the charcoal

Waiting for the bread to bake -

I've been wanting to do this for a few months now, since we are living in a yurt and the only oven I have is a Coleman 12 inch square oven that sits on a burner of our 2 burner Primus camp stove.  I finally got up the nerve to try the San Joaquin Sourdough formula from Dave Snyder in our 'primitive' digs here on Orcas Island.    

We've moved to Orcas Island, Washington and while our house is being built we are living in a 16 ft diameter yurt.  it is cozy to say the least.  Here is my bread kneading station set up in the yurt on top of our clothes dresser.

After baking 80 dozen Christmas cookies, I switched to buttermilk rolls for my husband's potluck and some San Francisco sourdough bread for us and one loaf to my son-in-law, Paul.  Paul lives in Rio Rancho, NM so I'll be sending his loaf tomorrow via UPS. 

Wishing you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Today, I took out a portion of the spent grain in the freezer that was leftover from making beer last week. (The beer is resting comfortably for another week after being decanted from the carboy into a second carboy).  The bread made from the spent grain along with a wild yeast starter and whole wheat soaker is rising right now - soon to be baked. 

Linda

I finally got around to making Eric's Rye Bread.  I've been wanting to try out this formula ever since I saw it posted here on TFL.  It is a wonderfully fragrant loaf of rye with sourdough, onions and caraway.  I sauteed two medium sized onions in about 2 TBSP of olive oil and added them to the final dough along with all the other ingredients.  The dough smelled sooo good even before it was baked.  The bread is light and fluffy.  I baked the second loaf about 10 minutes more for a total of 50 minutes since it was a 2 lb.

We ran out of whole wheat sandwich bread and there is only a crust of sourdough left.  Yikes!  Time to start baking.  Actually I started the San Francisco sourdough three days ago per David Snyder's formula, a very reliable go-to loaf of tangy goodness.  Those were baked first. 

I had to use up the rest of the ricotta I made so it was time to make an sweet Italian Easter pie to match the savory one, which we have almost completely devoured.  The recipe I used is from the website http://www.ciaoitalia.com  The only 'change' I made was to use wheatberries in place of the rice as indicated in the recipe.  Otherwise the pie was made per instructions.  I tasted some of the filling as I was making the pie and it is very flavorful with vanilla, orange zest, orange juice and cinnamon.  I have seen some pies t

Okay, I got rid of the baking soda in the bread.  It doesn't taste like baking soda anymore.  I added 1/4 cup honey to the bread instead of diastatic malt, added zest of one orange and one more cup of oatmeal substituted for about that much flour. 

Results- better but still not a loaf to write home about, rather bland in flavor.  My husband says it's not near as flavorful as the 100% whole wheat bread from Peter Reinhart's Whole Grain Breads.  Hmmm, what to do next? 

Here's my first go at the sourdough oat bread recipe I received from a friend of mine.  I made half a recipe and made note of the weight of each item as I went along.  The formula can be found in grams by following the original posting of the recipe at http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/32444/sourdough-oat-bread

The crumb -