WatertownNewbie's blog

A place where I order rye chops also has emmer flour, and I decided to get some.  Looking for a recipe, I found one on TFL by leslieruf.  By and large I followed his description, although there were a few fairly minor differences.

Paul (pnguyen951) recently posted a recipe for a spelt loaf, and I decided to give it a try.

Having found a good source for solod (the fermented red rye malt), I have been baking several different rye loaves recently.  This one is a Lithuanian bread based on a recipe from Stanley Ginsberg (http://theryebaker.com/black-rye-breadjuoda-rugine-duona-lithuania/).

Recently I posted about baking the Borodinsky 1940 bread.  This bake is the Borodinsky Supreme based on the recipe in a TFL post from February 2014.

Yesterday I baked a Borodinsky loaf using the 1940 formula in the video by Rus Brot (thanks, Ilya, for posting that link in your blog).  In the final dough, I combined 100 grams of all-purpose flour with 50 grams of whole wheat flour (a substitution mentioned by Rus Brot) and otherwise pretty much followed the approach in the video.

Although there are some large time gaps in the process, I was kept busy at times cleaning up from the preceding step and preparing for the next step.  I wonder how they made this bread in the old country?

Inspired by one of Ilya's recent posts about a rye bread, I decided to try a recipe from Maurizio Leo's site (The Perfect Loaf) for a rye bread with some seeds.  The night before the bake I prepared the levain, which consists of mature starter (47 g), rye flour (234 g of King Arthur White Rye Flour), and water (234 g).  At the same time I put roasted unsalted sunflower seeds (65 g), roasted unsalted pumpkin seeds (65 g), and whole flaxseed (30 g) in a bowl and added enough hot tap water (214 g) to submerge the seeds.  Both the levain and the soaker were covered with plastic w

Abe recently posted about a bread he put together from some flour and seeds, and the combination appealed to me as a change of pace from the usual breads that I bake.  Here is my version (pretty much following his steps).

     The ingredients in my version of his bread are:

Spelt Flour -- 400 g

Whole Rye Flour -- 100 g

Salt -- 8 g

Pumpkin Seeds -- 15 g

Sunflower Seeds -- 20 g

Flaxseeds -- 10 g

Sesame Seeds (white) -- 15 g

Starter -- 23 g

Water -- 420 g

This is for all of the new bakers who want to tackle a Tartine recipe and get a sense of what to expect and look for during the various stages.

The Tartine Bread book begins with the Basic Country Bread, which is 90% all-purpose flour and 10% whole wheat flour.  With a 75% hydration, this can be a challenge for those who have not handled much dough, but the recipe is manageable, and making this bread will give you experience in recognizing the signs for when to move on from step-to-step (and when to be patient too).

From the number of recent postings about sourdough starters, it appears that many have taken up bread baking.  This seemed a good opportunity to illustrate various steps during my preparation of Country Rye from the Tartine book.  I always benefit from seeing what something is supposed to look like, which is why I have included so many photos.

This is such a fun bread to make, and in contrast to loaves that weigh a pound or two, this one weighed in at 1886 grams (~ 4.16 pounds).  It is from The Bread Baker's Apprentice (by Reinhart), and for those who have the book you will likely recognize the loaf as the one in the cover photo.