Blog posts

Today's bake: Sourdough Bread with a Prebiotic Soaker

Source: CalBeachBaker/Michael Kalanty

Note: Prebiotic soaker, Med sourness -29 % prefermented flour

Discussion:

I though that I would post this 1st attempt of my regular sandwich sourdough bread with the newly added prebiotic soaker. I've taken the idea and the ratios from Michael Kalanty's online sourdough pizza with prebiotic soaker recipe and adapted it to this bread recipe.

Did you know that the price of pecans is much less here in the south compared with in Canada?  So I decided I’d try making pecan sticky buns that I’ve seen but never eaten.  To bring a bit of Canada to them I’ve added maple syrup to the topping.  The rest of the bun is pretty standard cinnamon rolls.  I’ve used my usual stiff sweet levain to keep the sourness in check.  I’m still fully hand developing the dough so decided to try an experiment.

 I love adding cooked rice to bread.  It adds a nice flavor and texture to the final loaf.  For this bake I used Organic Jade Pearl Rice that was cooked with some chicken stock.  I also added some mashed potatoes for some extra softness.  

I was grating a semi sweet chocolate bar and as usual the loose chocolate gets magnetized and starts to creep up my steel box grater and threatens to make a big mess when trying to get the bits where they should be.  So I thought...would putting a magnet on the grater make it worse or tame these wee dancing flakes?  

This batch of caramel apple penettone is the most successful to date - 18 cm high, 1000g exactly. This is the Roy recipe, which is a lower egg yolk formula. My lievito madre has been out of storage for about two weeks.

For the first week, I fed the LM only once a day at 1:1:.40, keeping it at room temp for 12 hours and refrigerated for 12 hours. I found that this had the tendency to increase acidity very slowly, moving me toward target. 

Today's bake:  Friendship Loaf

Source: Sourdough Recipes for Rustic Fermented Breads, Sweets, Savories, and More - Sarah Owens

Note:Increased TDW from 1.621kg to 2.0kg

Discussion:

Another recipe from Sourdough Recipes for Rustic Fermented Breads, Sweets, Savories, and More by Sarah Owens.

Well in the UK we have been having an energy crisis, which has caused gas and electricity prices to go through the roof. Also the cost of flour and general groceries have increased no end. With that in mind and wanting to keep my kitchen monster alive I thought I would play around with smaller loaves and using my trusty Ninja air fryer.

Today's bake: Polish-Ukrianian Rye - Chleb Bezkidzki (Poland)

Source: The Rye Baker by Stanley Ginsberg

Note: Changed TDW from 1.374  kg to 2.0 kg.,used plant-based buttermilk.

Discussion:

I chanced upon some interesting YouTube videos of the JWU Bread Symposium 2021. One of them was a prebiotic bread by Michael Kalanty He uses a sourdough leavened soaker of home milled wheat grits, oats and flax seed to develop prebiotic bacteria.

It sounded interesting so I decided to give it a go and (painfully!) transcribed most of the recipe from the video and guessed a few missing bits.

It went something like this:

Prebiotic Bread Michael Kalanty

Description 

Whole Wheat Sourdough

David Snyder

3/19/2023

Back in 2016, I was on a quest for a whole wheat sourdough bread I liked enough to want to bake often. I baked breads from a number of my favorite bread cookbooks, and none were bad. This bread was of my own formulation, and, as I recall, it was the one I liked the best. In spite of my good intentions at the time, I have not baked it again since. I think it just got forgotten. Flipping through my Sourdough Bread looseleaf recipe binder, I came across the formula and decided to make it again.