Salilah's blog

Visiting family for Easter - so I baked a selection of breads:

Firstly, the Pugliese, based on David Snyder's recipe - I originally did this for us, but ran out of time to do another one for the family so this one was substituted

In the middle of March, we had a long weekend / short week in Sicily - great fun!

Varied breads - we had two completely different Pane Nero de Castelvetrano (one from a baker in Marsala, one from a supermarket in Sciacca) and one Pugliese I think (well, it looked like it) from a baker in Sciacca

I decided this week to have a go at the most recent (?) SF Sourdough posted by DMSnyder (http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/27892/my-san-francisco-sourdough-quest-take-4)

Must admit that the timing on this was the most difficult - I couldn't work out how to get all these 16 and 20 hour chunks in!

We are invited tonight to a Burns Night supper - long-running, we've been going for years!  I thought this time I should try to take some bread (though I wasn't confident enough to stop them buying bread - must be more confident!)

I'm enjoying experimenting with using various other liquids instead of some or all of the water (not honestly with much success so far!)

My MIL was with us when we were shopping, and she likes the recent alcoholic ginger beer - so I thought "why not?" and bought a bottle.  I found a recipe for ginger beer sourdough (from Yozzause) and adapted it a bit.

I baked this yesterday - but we ate it today, so I hope that counts!

Another version of Jan Hedh's Lemon bread, with less lemon and added lemon thyme

Ingredients:
100g 100% white starter
180g durum flour
180g white strong flour
50g rye
130g water
100g cider
25g EVOO
8g salt
zest of half a lemon (would use more in future)
leaves from 6-8 sprigs lemon thyme (would use more in future)

Based on a recipe from cityhippyfarmgirl through Yeast Spotting:

http://cityhippyfarmgirl.com/2011/09/20/golden-light-rye-rolls/

I thought I'd give these a go.  I didn't have the malt flour, and my shaping is not quite up to scratch - so I went more for the rustic look and didn't do the rye wash.  Also I didn't have flaxseed so used linseed instead!

Recipe:

Stout in both senses of the word!

I decided to have a go at a sourdough version of Katie's stout & linseed loaf - waiting for the barm to ripen, I wondered what to do with the rest of the beer and decided "sort of baguette but a bit bigger!"

150g 100% white starter
25g rye flour
290g strong white bread flour
200g beer (Thwaites Very Nutty Black bottle conditioned, Tesco)
8g salt

Well, what a cute loaf!

Using the recipe from Franko
http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/24172/first-success-altamura-project
which builds on others - I thought I'dgive it a go.   I'd tried a version with some white flour added - but not this time...

Building the Preferment:

I used the white wheat starter I have, and couldn't measure out a small enough quantity, so ended up with
30g starter (wheat, 100%)
50g durum flour
50g water

Two loaves underway this weekend - Hamelman's Pain au Levain, and Hamelman's Pain au Levain with Whole-Wheat Flour - both use a stiff levain which I hadn't done before, so I made enough to do a good-sized loaf for each.