Song Of The Baker's blog

I find myself on a rare occasion of being bored, having no work to do and no bread to bake or post.  Perhaps a good opportunity to share a little about my journey to bread baking.

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Little did I know at the time, but the 'knead' to make bread was deeply rooted within my creative core long ago...

I didn't have much time to bake this weekend, so I decided to fit in a simple focaccia bake to go along side a Spaghetti Pomodoro I was planning to make for dinner.

I haven't baked in almost a month and my hands were starting to shake.  Withdrawl is no fun.

I decided to bake up a couple of staple loaves with some small tweaks to test my post vacation abilities.  Simple levain with whole wheat, bread, and rye flours.  Flax, barley, sunflower, cracked wheat, oats, and sesame seed packed.

Forgive me for going overboard with the photos.  I recently acquired some new gear and learned some new techniques on Photoshop.  A bit shutter happy since my trip to Arizona (668 photos!).

John

Sorry for the duplicate post however I realized I posted this bake accidentally in the forum but wanted it on my blog.

Today I finally had a chance to bake the Tartine loaf with my new baking gear.  This is the second bake with the gear.  I strongly suggest to anyone experiencing the same issues as I had with bakes, GET THESE SIMPLE ITEMS.  It has taken my breads up a few notches and fixed all my problems immediately.

Sometimes you pause and wonder why it took so long to do some things.

In the last week, I finally gathered some important tools that for no reason other than being busy and perhaps lazy, completed my home bread baking needs.

I had been struggling with scoring, more specifically the lack of blooming and ears.  With some help from David Snyder and these new tools, it looks like I have finally overcome these issues.

These are the three items I picked up.

After a short break from posting in my blog, I am back at the helm.

This weekend I thought I would try a seeded rye that, at first sight a while back, had me drooling since.  Breadsong's post of this bread inspired me to try, bake, devour.

Today I was on a mission.  To defeat this fear of developing and shaping rye dough.  I learn best through video and photos and I have found that there are not nearly as many video tutorials for rye breads as there are for white breads.  I used a 40% formula and followed all that I have learned on this site as much as possible.  My last week's attempt came up short with little rise/oven spring.  This time, a combination of longer bulk ferment and proof times, along with an amazing organic medium rye flour from a local mill, produced loaves that I am finally happy wit

After my shopping spree at a local grain mill yesterday, I was in the mood to experiment with some different flours.  I had some left over buttermilk in the fridge from my Danish Rye bake so I decided to make my (ever popular in these parts) buttermilk pancakes but with organic spelt flour.  I was a bit on the careful side and opted to still keep 1/2 cup AP flour in the recipe.  These turned out so well that next time I might even eliminate the AP flour all together.  As a note, the apple topping pairs VERY well with these so don't omit if you have a choice.

I have been excited to bake a simple rye bread since my starter had become ready to use.  Also, I went to a local organic mill and stocked up an all sorts of grains, flours as well as a hard to find Puy lentil from France.  I chose to do a 40% Rye with some toasted and roughly ground seeds (sunflower, flax and caraway) within.  I also got to use a brotform for the first time.  I will update with crumb photos, but I have a feeling I should have seen more oven spring and height from a formula such as this one.  I did forget to bulk ferment an hour, so I just proofed f

I was told recently that Baker Blogs is where I should be posting my bakes and not in the forum as I have been doing since I became a member back in August.  If I am doing this wrong, please let me know.  Here is a link to the forum post of yesterday's Danish Rye bake.

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/31758/my-first-danish-rye-rugbrot

John