rgreenberg2000's blog

Got my weekly bake done today, and all went smoothly.  The only real adjustment to my usual process was due to an early dinner that we had scheduled to celebrate our youngest daughter's birthday with her grandparents.  Instead of my usual 1.5 hour final proof at RT (before retarding for a few hours), I only let it proof at RT for .5 hours, then into the fridge for about 6 hours.  Everything came out well (no crumb shot yet, but I expect it will look the same as usual, perhaps a little tighter based on the dough feel, and how it looked out of the fridge.)

My weekly bake this week, and I decided to go back to my favorite flour mix - 10% WW, 10% Semolina, and 5% Rye.  Of course, the WW % is actually higher since I feed my starter with WW flour, but you get the idea! :)  I tried very hard to be as gentle as possible with my stretching, folding, and I like the results thus far (still cooling, so haven't cut into them.)  In particular, I think these loaves seemed to hold their shape after being removed from the bannetons better than any loaves I have made before.  Here are the particulars, and some pics.....

Today (well, and yesterday) was time for round 2 of my sourdough bagels.  The last batch were ok, but very dense, and HARD!!  So, I changed two things this time around.  I upped the hydration to 61% (from 59%), and I let the bagels proof at room temp for about 90 minutes after shaping.  The rest of the process I left the same, and, with the bagels now out of the oven, I think I'm on the right track.  Oh, wait, I did also add 25g sugar, so I guess I changed three things!  Here's what I did.....

Preferment/Levain - 339g

I got a bee in my bonnet the other day about making a simple loaf of 50% whole wheat sandwich bread.  Nothing special, just a good solid bread for toast, sandwiches and the like.  One thing I wanted to do was to keep the level of effort fairly minimal (somewhere just above using the bread machine....) :)  I read a bunch of different recipes, and this is what I came up with:

300g AP flour

300g Whole wheat flour

366g Water

30g Milk

1 Tbsp butter

1 Tbsp sugar

14g Salt

1.5g ADY

I already has bagels on the mind for this weekend when Lazy Loafer (Wendy) posted up her lovely batch yesterday.  So, I dove into the deep end, and took my first go at making sourdough bagels.  I did some searching, and decided to go with THIS RECIPE (posted by Quantum.)  I modified the levain build slightly (favoring a 1:5:5 build up), and also did the bulk proof in the fridge overnight.  I'll cut to the chase on the results......they ARE bagels, but they are a bit denser than even a

Ok, time for my weekly bake, so I thought it would be a good opportunity to up my Whole Wheat percentage to 50%.  Just to make it impossible to compare at all to previous bakes, I thought I'd also do my first overnight pre-mix (a la Trevor Wilson), AND up the hydration from my usual 68% to 75%.  Nothing like changing lots of variables all at once! :)

Back again with more RWC sourdough.  Mostly the same process as I usually use, with a few changes.....  I built my levain using 50/50 AP/Rye instead of my usual WW.  Adjusted the amount of WW in the formula to keep that % about the same.  I used a mix of black and white sesame seeds to keep my loaf from sticking to the towel that lines my banneton.  Here are the details......

1000g AP flour

205g WW flour

240g Starter (100% hydration)

770g Water

26g Salt

This week’s round of RWC SD.  Changes for this one were:

• Dropped WW addition, increased Semolina
• Reduced hydration to 67% (was going to make baguettes, but didn’t)
• Increased 75F proof to 2 hours before overnight

Did my usual mix, rest, pinch, stretch/fold, rest, s/f, rest, s/f rest, bulk, etc.

I missed baking last week due to life getting in the way, so was happy to get some time this weekend to make friends again with "Woody" (yes, my starter has a name) and make a fresh batch of my usual weekly sourdough.  This week, I dropped the rye to let the semolina shine through a little more......next time, I think I will drop the WW (except for what's in the starter) and up the semolina appropriately.

1000g AP (KA)

100g WW (KA)

100g Semolina (Bob's)

250g Starter (100% hydration, fed w/WW)

803g Water

26g Salt

After my first positive experience with baguettes last week, I wanted to give them another try (and we were out of bread…..gasp!!)  I decided I wanted to go with a 65% hydration dough this time to take any dough handling issues out of the process.  I also decided to just use a yeasted dough since I had a window to make bread, and didn’t have a leaven built up from my stored starter.  Here’s the formula I used (shooting for 3x 330g loaves): 

480g AP (80%)

120g Semolina (20%)

390g Water (65%)

3g ADY

12g salt