louie brown's blog

From the last bake, all dressed up and ready to be consumed:

My wife returned from Israel with some beautiful zatar. The word describes both an herb as well as an herb blend. She brought both, from a spice dealer in her home town, where her family has been living for about two hundred years. The spice dealer has been there about as long. The blend varies from place to place and typically, people argue over their preferences. Most of the blends have the zatar, thyme, sesame. This one has lemon salt as well. It's just a great herbal condiment.

It seems as if there is no end to the riches of this website. I'm learning things about German breads that will keep me busy for years. Who knew?

Still looking to use up the buckwheat flour I've had around for a while, Karin's loaf looked and sounded awfully good. I made a couple of changes to suit my taste and method, but this is Karin's bread and it is one of the tastiest I've ever baked. The buckwheat and rye, balanced with a little sweetness and spice, is just unbeatable. Recipients gobbled it up right in front of me, not even waiting to take it home.

...minus the yeast, with a hand chopped 100% skirt steak burger and her friend onion rings.

This is essentially a savory brioche dough. I didn't see the need for the yeast. There's a 24 hour preferment (I did most of it in the fridge,) another one for the dough, which is very highly developed by mixer. The long fermentations contribute a lot of flavor that would be missing due to the intensive mix, which is the thing that strengthens the dough and gives it its beautiful even crumb.

I haven't been able to find much in the way of suggestions for baking bread with buckwheat, which is a shame because it is so delicious. I can't say much about Kayser or Leader, but I am grateful to Occidental for his post on this bread. It was delicious.

The large holes are the result of incomplete degassing before shaping, a defect, as Hamelman would say. Otherwise, the crumb was very nice:

This dough behaved more like 65% than 75% in my bone-dry winter city kitchen. I do like the long autolyse and long bulk fermentation, and I understand why txfarmer has this as her regular baguette. There is plenty of opportunity to vary the formula, as she has demonstrated, and there is also plenty of opportunity to observe and try to understand fermentation. The refrigerator is a pretty safe place for this dough, but it does need watching once it's out.

Thanks are due at the top to Farine-MC for her charming blog and its marvelous, useful content, and also to breadsong, scoring master and exemplary baker.

In brief, I neglected to take account of the very low humidity in New York City right now. My maple oatmeal was both too stiff and underproofed. Yes, I made the same mistake two weeks ago with another loaf. Now I have two striked against me, so I hope that atleast it will be something different that I overlook next time. The effects of the underproofing are clear on the batard.

A return to Andy's formula yielded good results and considerable lessons about dough development, strength, and fermentation. At the same time, I'm more convinced than ever that all home baking is local. Andy, if you are reading, thanks again for your guidance.

I realize that there is a certain urge here on TFL to publish only the best loaves and the best photos of them. We all want to show each other the best we can do. But in this case, I am publishing what I consider to be a failed attempt at a beautiful bread in the hope that I will learn to improve it from the comments I may receive.

There was no KA flour in the house, so I used supermarket ap for this. Along with a fair amount of olive oil, the result was a finer, softer crumb than I am accustomed to. Nevertheless, topped with salt, oil, parmigiano, marjoram and thyme, it made a delicious accompaniment for cheese.

I am partial to the round freeform shape for my foccaccia.