louie brown's blog

Much as "Slow Food" is a contemporary rubric for "what was once normal," so too was all bread once made without commercial yeast, where nowadays, making something "sourdough" is presented as a kind of achievement. Ciabatta is a bread originally made by poor people, likely first in Liguria. I learned about it just south of there in northern Tuscany, where they pronounce it "shabbatta." It means slipper.

I read about and saw pictures of gorgeous flaxseed ryes coming out of members' ovens last week and I thought I'd give it a try, but I don't like to bring new flours or specialty ingredients into the house until I use up much of what I already have. Such is life in a small New York City kitchen. Finding no rye and no flaxseeds, flaxseed rye was pretty much out of the question. There was some flaxseed meal, though, and a nice bag of Central Milling whole wheat, so I went that way.

A number of years now reading and posting here and the sentence that rings in my ears as the best advice I've ever had in home baking is Pat's "Get the fermentation right," which I guess could also be said as "Watch the dough, not the clock." Now that the rest of you have moved on to the nicely controlled environment of proofing boxes , I am left to my analog temperature probe and the vagaries of kitchen temperatures. So I've practiced on some basics, watching the dough.

This bread combines Larry's idea for kneading the cheese into the flour with my own practice of showering the top with parmigiano and then topping it with caramelized onion, which in turn came out of Silverton.

This is really Hamelman's Vermont Sourdough, with buckwheat instead of rye. 

Working with buckwheat flour seems like the kitchen equivalent of very wet cement. I'd be inclined to be even more aggressive about folding, especially earlier in the bulk ferment, and I'd bake straight from cold, rather than leave the overnight-proofed boule out for an hour before baking, but all told, I'm pleased with the result. The buckwheat provides a very delicate texture that adds a certain elegance to the bread, and the taste is delectable.

Greetings. The crazy heat in my kitchen broke for long enough to allow me a few loaves for the holiday, although the heat was so great at times that my dough just died. After a long-awaited vacation coming up next week, I am looking forward to more reasonable conditions for baking when i return.

Looking to clear up the number of packages containing small amounts of flour, seeds, grains, etc., I noticed that Hamelman mentions in his description of one of his five grain loaves that it looks nice as a large boule. Having neither the time, the patience, nor, most important, the space in the fridge (I like these retarded overnight) I took him at his word and made up the loaf below. It contains at least three different kinds of seeds, all toasted, cracked rye, bulghur, steel cut oats, dark whole wheat, flax, flaxseed meal, who knows what else.

Forgive me. I have strayed from the unending pursuit of the platonic ideal in bread baking, and have had some fun. 

I was inspired by a loaf made by breadmakingbassplayer that sounded very good. I began by calculating a 75% hydration dough. With the water content from the scallions, and the addition of some sesame oil, I'm not sure how much higher than that it wound up. Parchment paper and rice flour are your friends in a case like this.

I don't know what I am doing hanging around a culinary activity that largely demands, and attracts, precision-oriented individuals and the sort of methodical, careful procedures that lend themselves to notekeeping. I am a right side person. I don't keep records of my bakes. I do measure my ingredients by weight but I often make arithmetic mistakes. I fail to take account of variations in temperature and humidity in my apartment.