Blog posts

Hello,

Miracles happen.  Regardless of differences of beliefs and/or religions in the world --  please remember to give a hug to the ones you love, and always love your brothers and sisters.   Every day.

And make good bread.

-gvz

Last month was SFBI's Artisan 2 class, and I was there! I have no idea if there were any other TFL people in attendance, but there was one group who decided to name themselves, "the loafers" so I did wonder. Then again, nobody mentioned anything about an internet forum, so who knows.

At any rate, I came out of the class and made this,

 72% hydration, 25% pre-fermented flour, and 0.08% yeast, with a retarded final proof.

Last weekend, as I was trying to decide what I wanted to bake next, two things occurred to me.  First, I had only baked one bread from Inside the Jewish Bakery so far.  Second, a rye bread sounded like a good thing.  

This is a Tartine-style loaf I made using 100% Central Milling Old Country Type 85 (high extraction) flour.  I was very happy with the result since I got an extremely tender crumb with the my ideal crumb structure.  I can finally enjoy my favorite Tartine loaf with some added nutrition from this type of flour.  

Here is the final dough recipe which should yield a 3-lb loaf. 

100% CM Old Country Type 85 flour - 725 gr

85% Water - 616 gr

A few months ago I made Tom Cat's Semolina Filone from Glezer's "Artisan Baking."  It was a really tasty bread, but I wanted to try something different.  This week, I made it again, but substituted sourdough starter for the poolish to get another dimension to the flavors.  The results were pretty good.  After cooling, the crumb had a smooth mouth-feel, while there was some chewiness to the crust.  I probably could have baked the loaves a few minutes longer to get a crispier

Visiting my family and friends in Germany I took some photos I want to share.

My friend Michaela likes shopping at an organic farm store at Gut Wulfsdorf. I never sah Laugenbaguettes (pretzel baguettes) or Laugencroissants (pretzel croissants) before. The baguettes tasted quite nice, the crumb was airy but a bit chewier than regular one.

The breads are baked in a wood fired oven at the farm bakery. (This is a batch of Easter Bunny Cookies.)

I think we all agree Phil's breads are awesome. When I saw his latest post, I instantly decided that I want to make the desem bread... but I didn't have a desem starter, and with 2 active starters in my house, I didn't really wanted to make another starter from scratch. But a couple of days later I saw David's post on the same topic and I followed his example.