I’ve been making this bread every weekend since mid-April with the goal of entering it in the county fair, which has a sourdough division this year. The theme of the fair this year is “Over the Moon”, hence the stencil.
I made 3 batches of 2 loaves each so I’d have plenty to choose from, this one looked the nicest.
This week I decided to wing it somewhat, a departure for me. I made a dough I’ve made often before - 30% whole wheat, 79% hydration, 12% levain - and added a soaker of a small handful each of sesame, flax, chia, pumpkin, and sunflower seeds. I didn’t weigh the seeds or water in the soaker because I knew it would be a much higher percentage of the dough weight than much I was taught to use. My bad! I’ll have to experiment to recreate it to get the wonderful aroma and flavor. The dry seeds were probably around 30% or more of the dough weight.
Yesterday I did my big bake of ten loaves to take to the neighbors for the holidays. After lots of head scratching I decided to work in two batches, the second following 2.5 hours after the first. For once I had plenty of refrigerator space available but only 6 bannetons and 2 Dutch ovens (actually I have more but the oven will only hold 2).
I decided to do a test run of my planned bake for next week. For the last couple of years I’ve taken loaves around to our neighbors, this year it will be more than ever, 10 loaves. I still have to work out how to manage that, 2 at a time in my oven. I’ll be studying Danni’s posts for ideas!
When I’ve used cranberries before I thought it was too much, so this time I scaled back the cranberries to 30% of the add-ins and upped the walnuts to 70%. Total add-ins 11% of the dough weight.
I’ve been playing with freshly ground heritage varieties lately, this is my latest foray into freshly ground wheat.
I bought 2 pounds of locally grown Frassinetto wheat berries at the farmers market last week. Since my wife has given up on trying to be gluten free, I’m now allowed to use our old Nutrimill. Yay!
I built my levain from DABrownman’s NMNF starter, many thanks for that scheme! I used last week’s leftover RedFife flour and bran for the feedings.
I repeated last week’s bake of 36+hour Baguettes, overall hydration at 74% this time. The shaping went much better and although I thought the scoring was easier the cuts didn’t open up as well as I hoped.
Type 70 flour, proofed en couch and transferred to the stone by flipboard. 4 Demi-baguettes, 15” long, 250 grams dough weight each. Baked with hot water on lava rocks for steam in the first half of the bake. It’s a good challenge and there’s always a reason to do it again! I need to shuffle the loaves around on the stone next time to get the sides to brown more evenly
I haven’t made Baguettes in over a year and I’m pretty rusty although I’ve never been as consistent or practiced as the master. I used the “36 hour + Baguettes” recipe by txfarmer, but I reduced the hydration to 72% which was too dry in retrospect, but easier to handle when out of practice. I used Central Milling Type 70 malted flour which gives excellent flavor.
I’ve been making Trevor’s Champlain sourdough a lot recently and have made progress but the open crumb still eludes me. This is last weekend’s bake and I’m pretty happy with it. I increased the hydration by 2% and that helped. But I’m nowhere near “volcanic crumb”. Very pleased with the oven spring and blisters!
I've been playing every weekend with add-ins, this is my latest effort. Also the highest ratio of whole wheat to white I've challenged so far.
450 g. AP flour
550 g. whole wheat flour
160 g. type 110 starter, 100% hydration
19g. salt
741 , water
80 g. hemp seeds
50 g. toasted sesame seeds
80 g. bulghur wheat
150 g. dried currants
I soaked the bulghur and currants overnight, they took up a lot more water than I expected. Unfortunately I didn't keep track of the amount of water in the soaker, something to remember for next time.
For those in the San Francisco Bay Area, North bay especially, Celine Underwood of Brickmaiden Breads is putting on three sourdough workshops this fall. I took the beginning workshop last October and loved it, and I'll be attending the advanced one in December this year. The info is at brickmaidenbreads.com, check it out!
Tom
