Blog posts

This is the next in a series of blog posts, regarding my quest to reproduce Acme Bakery's Walnut Levain. See:

previous post

and

original post

I think I'm pretty much there. My loaf is quite large now, because we like it. There are two preferments, one "old dough" (yeast raised) and one a sour sponge for flavor. The loaf itself is basically yeast raised.

Day 0, Evening

Sour Sponge:

Thanksgiving day 2010

Rotisserie barbecued turkey (okay, so it's not bread)

Glenn (on the left) meets turkey (on the right). 

Day after Thanksgiving breakfast

 I'm sure that many of TFL members remember the recipe -http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/15778/g%C3%A9rard-rubaud-miche submitted by Shiao-Ping. 

On November I was experimenting with the recipe-changing flours, adjusting time of proofing and fermentation.

Whole Grain Miche

Pain au Levain with Red Fife Whole Wheat Flour

This was my first time to use oven to bake bread (before used bread machine). I had been wanting to try the no-knead bread receipe since it came out in 2006.

I followed the original receipe but tuned it to suit my case. Since my order of the digital scale hasn't arrived, I could only use volume to measure the quantities:

• 3 Cup flour (2 AP + 1 WW)
• 1 5/8 tsp salt
• 3/8 tsp active dry yeast (direct into the mix)
• 1 5/8 Cup filtered water

After mixing, it looked pretty sloppy.

What a mouthfull of a title and what and what a mouth full of a bread

I have recently made a very nice Dark Irish Stout and retained the dregs from the bottom of the fermenter. The stout has just been sampled with  a very big tick of approval it was a very vigourous brew and performed very well indeed. i took 250 grams of stoneground wholemeal flour and added 250mls of my brewery sludge  and bought it together and set it aside as a soaker.

Plain sourdough is not something I make often, though I intended to  but I seems to easily get distracted by multigrain and/or fruit breads. Somehow, I feel like one last weekend and I picked the Pain au Levain with whole wheat from jeffrey Hamelman's Bread cookbook.

For turkey day this year the family get-together will be smaller than usual, 18 rather than the more usual 25 to 30. Maybe that's not a bad thing, though. I volunteered to bring the bread and a dessert.

With a house full of company, my little grandaughter helped me make this apple and pumpkin pie.  We used Caroline's buttermilk crust recipe..ran a little short on dough..so didn't get a fancy crimped edge..no matter, won't affect the taste...

I made one large 7 pound recipe for two loaves (Hamelman's "Vermont Sourdough with Increased Whole Wheat").  Given they were 3.5 lbs each I baked one at a time. Both were retarded 13 hours in the fridge (okay, one was 12 and one was 13 hours) then placed directly on the hot stone after slashing, steam used first 12 minutes.