not.a.crumb.left's blog

Has anyone else here  also enjoyed the new audiobook by Chad Robertson and Jennifer Latham?

I have started using their double booster feeding with good results and also love their mixing schedule introducing water in steps. Now I have been doing that anyway but love the shorter intervals and tried going beyond by normal comfort zone and upping by feel..ending on 87% hydration for a loaf with 2O% WW, 30% Canadian white and the rest Shipton Mill No. 4 Strong White..

Hi all, I have not been posting for a while..as a bit busy on a total new adventure and some may remember when I started baking here and baked the Champlain loaf with Dan on a community bake again and again....

I have now a little bake room at our house No. 44 and just started baking for a market as well as smaller subscriptions as I handmix only...

I found a package with Emmer flour in the larder that I had totally forgotten about so my weekly bake for friends consisted of 25% Emmer with the rest Marriages Strong White as I had not baked with this flour for a long time and did not want to go wild too quickly....and risk the friends ending up with disaster loaves...ha, ha....

I sadly could not cut into them and then used the same approach for another bake two days later that I almost forgot to cut into but managed to take a photo before it was all gone...

I always wanted to make this bread...and love that bun at the top and the character of this bread. I also have fond memories as long time ago as a student,  I cycled all the way through Galicia...

I remember well Santiago de la Compostela and the 'Jakobsweg' a path which still many people walk for pilgrimage...

Whilst there are formulas on you Tube in Spanish, I was surprised that there is not more information out there....

So I just had a go and treated it like a ciabatta at 85% hydration with a cold bulk.

I have not been posting too much as might get too repetitive for your folks and also have been visiting family in Germany...

So being back nurtured that starter and tried to bake with a different Shipton Mill Organic Semolina Durum flour as the Caputo Semola Rimicinata is not easy to get hold off where I live...and I looooove that flour....

It is very fine but the glutenins seem to be 'weaker' than the Caputo and I use less water...less of an autolyse and less of slap and folds to protect the gluten that I want to develop...

A while ago I bought back some Swiss Ruchmehl from Germany and was curious about the

flour as Max Kugel, in Bonn bakes a lot with it in his bakery...

Last time it turned out to be an amazing bake and sadly I could not get my hands on it in UK....

But my fortune changed when I spotted Dark Swiss Flour on the Shipton Mill web site.

It did not give much information but when I baked with it, indeed it was very similar to the Ruchmehl, I thought...

Time for the weekly bake and I decided that I want to improve  my shaping of a 'torpedo' style loaf

with more tampered ends. Not quite there but making a start...

Research first and I've found the following bakers on IG which shared their shaping and watched their videos endless times...

Coated with white and black sesame seeds.. 

When I saw the other day Leslie's beautiful seeded loaf based on Ru's formula I felt inspired and dived into my books and online and on this site to look at different formulas..as it was time for my weekly 4 loaves bake for friends.

I always enviously looked at posts on IG and here when I saw marbled loaves.

They remind me so much of baking "Marmorkuchen' with my Mum and evoke some of that feeling making it as a bread. I remembered a thread where Dan experimented with chocolate malt.

I could not get any so just used some dark roasted Barley malt instead with some cocoa nibs that I had in the larder and grounded. 

I saw this beautiful image of a Pain Fendu from a very inspired baker http://picdeer.com/media/2004093069051294434_3455206222 and this was the over ambitious and a bit impromptu attempt to recreate something similar.

I basically mixed a  80% Champlain and rolled it out in the middle, degassing the dough quite a bit and then with the split at the bottom put it into a banneton.