Sedlmaierin's blog

Catching up again.

So, life has taken me on a charming and busy ride-no blogging time and I am therefore way behind on posting about my recent bakes. Not that there is anything to be missed since some of them did no turn out(and it seems I might not even have taken a picture of one of the breads,oh well).

Bread#1:

Irish Soda Bread

I have not been able to blog for a bit now, so a few bakes have lined up that I want to share.

#1 Vermont SD

Let's see...this bake went pretty much according to recipe and it ended up having a seriously low profile(3.75"thickest- 1.5" at it's thinnest). I don't know if the lowness of my bread's profile is acceptable! I wish I had written down more detailed notes on my previous Miche bakes(even though neither one of them had as high of a rye flour percentage as this one), in order for me to see how to augment my bake so that the loaf has just a tad bit more height.

This bread seemed really easy to make and it has an excellent flavor! After quizzing my family and friends they all voted for the version with onions, so that's what I made. Not having made or eaten potato bread before,I had no idea what to expect and the only thing that surprised me was how relatively soft the crust turned out to be-it was nice and crunchy when coming out of the oven, but softened upon cooling.I assume that is because it is relatively moist,with the potatoes,onions and oil.

I have blogged about baking Pretzels before and this time I had one concern I wanted to be able to improve on-shape. Turns out two improvements were made and I will need expert baker's help to determine what is responsible for the slight texture change -which in my eyes made them perfect!

Quick recap of the baguette baking:

-followed the recipe apart from the fact that I did not have enough AP flour on hand and sifted some stone ground white whole wheat flour to make up the difference.I think the ratio was about 3/4 AP to 1/4 WWW

-read and re-read about pre-shaping and shaping three times........even though it might not look it, that part seemed to go a lot better

-final proof was for about 1 hour 15 minutes

-the crumb is very light  and has a beautiful fragrant flavor;deeper taste probably due to the inclusion of the whole wheat

This is one of those breads I have been very eager to make, and it is finally done. I am posting about this now, even though the 24 hour rest is not done with yet,because the little man is asleep and I am also trying not to forget any aspects of the procedure.

-my SD starter with the rye meal fermented in the oven with pilot light on for about 12 hours and then I stuck it into the fridge for convenience

-I soaked the berries for about  18 hours, then boiled for about 1.5 hours

I apologise already..I don't really seem to be able to create such nice and well thought out entries as some of the fellow bakers here. They always end up having to be wedged into my life and suffer from such rough treatment.

So, here are pictures from my second try at the baguettes. I feel they were slightly more succesful than the first ones but still just so far from GOOD....they tasted nice, but they also just haven't tasted the way I remember baguettes tasting in Paris.

Ok, here I go again. I did try to take a few more pictures-semi succesfully.

Info about the actual bake and ingredients:

-I used Arrowhead Mills Organic whole rye flour and KA Bread Flour;no medium rye flour at all

-the freshening was done using my "old bread" rye starter-freshened with old bread,too

-I did not add the optional yeast

- the freshening fermented in my oven with pilot light on for 6 hours;basic sour on countertop for 24 hours(i figure the temp was around 68-70 degrees); full sour ripened for 3 hours in pilot lit oven