loydb's blog

Inspired by GermanFoodie's Sourdough Whole Wheat Crackers I used up some extra starter last night with a batch. I added 1/4 teaspoon caramel color to the dough, rested for 5 hours, and sprinkled with oregano, basil and kosher salt prior to baking. They came out tasty, really crispy and surprisingly sour, and are a way better deal than the  'gourmet' crackers available at the store. The only change I'll make next time is to incorporate the dried herbs into the dough rather than sprinkling on top.

Much like the planets, my need to refresh my 100% rye starter aligned with the arrival of Inside the Jewish Bakery. I've tried to do a 'traditional' yeasted rye in the past using commercial flour, but the results weren't particularly great, and neither my wife nor I like whole caraway seeds. When I read the recipe for the Old School Jewish Deli Rye, and saw the ground-up caraway, a little light went on, and I knew that was going to be my first bake from the book.

I broke out the metal 'stones' for my Retsel and made cornbread tonight. The corn was organic blue corn from Heartland Mill. The wheat flour in the recipe was a mixture of hard red and hard white wheat from Pleasant Hill. These, plus some butter and jam, were all we needed for dinner tonight.

Mini-loaf madness continues! This is Reinhart's basic sourdough, made from sourdo.com San Francisco culture that's been fed only with KA bread flour. With the addition of 5 oz of chopped dried figs and 4 oz of walnuts, the bread is excellent, but has no real sour. I'm not sure I'm continuing with this particular starter...

Here goes another pasta experiment. This time, I went with 100% durum wheat (other than a little KA that I used to flour the board and the pasta as it went through the machine). To make the dough, I combined 3 egg yolks (yolks only, trying for a very yellow noodle), the zest of 6 lemons, 1T each dill and basil, and 1.5t kosher salt in a blender, then mixed it into two cups of fresh-ground durum wheat (no sifting, 100% WW).

This is my take on Peter Reinhart's whole-grain struan. Instead of adding yeast, I made the firm starter using sourdo.com's San Francisco strain that I've been feeding nothing but home-milled wheat.

For the flour, I milled a mixture of 45% hard red wheat, 45% hard white wheat and 10% rye.

This is the BBA basic sourdough to which was added 2 diced granny smith apples, 4 oz of toasted walnuts and 3 oz of small-dice parmesan and asiago cheese. The starter was KA New England that had been fed 50/50 with KA bread flour and home-ground hard red wheat. The final flour addition was 15% WW, 5% Rye and 80% KA. It got a stretch-and-fold at 15, 45, 90 and 120 minutes, then proofed for another 3 hours. The final shaped loaves proofed a little over two hours before being glazed with egg yolk and baked.

This is my latest endeavor in home-milled grain pasta. I began by milling 5 oz durum wheat, 2.5 oz hard red wheat, and 2.5 oz hard white wheat. I didn't do any sifting this time.



To the ground wheat I added:

1/4 teaspoon chipotle chile powder
1/4 teaspoon ancho chile powder
1/4 teaspoon smoked Spanish paprika
1/2 teaspoon ground annato powder



In a blender, I combined

2 room temperature eggs

I got some of the San Francisco sourdough culture from http://www.sourdo.com/. I decided to make two different starters -- one that was fed nothing but King Arthur Bread Flour, the other fed nothing but home-milled hard red and hard white wheat. Both produced extremely active cultures within 4 days of 12-hour feedings. I used the basic sourdough bread recipe from BBA, using KA Bread Flour for one, and an 85% extraction sifting of hard red wheat (13%) for the second.

Last night was my second attempt at homemade pasta using home-milled flour. While my first attempt (http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/25340/experiments-pasta-milling-my-own-flour) was delicious, I tried a few new things based on comments there and reading elsewhere.