Blog posts

A while ago I bought a really beautiful book with breads from renowned German bakeries. Many rye bread recipes require medium rye types, easily available in German supermarkets, whereas American medium rye is hard to come by. Even my whole grocer carries only a medium grind of rye, not a lighter variety. European flours are numbered for their ash content (what's left after you forget your bread in the oven - just kidding, of course it's a properly conducted scientific incineration).

Mrs PG and I visited my parents and other family this month. Some of the time was loosely connected to my baking activities and a pleasant part of the journey.

How to cheer up sad, sick children?

Chocolate chips!

We have a case of glandular fever in our house at the moment making for a worrying week. Several trips to doctors, blood tests and we finally seem to have a boy with a smile and energy again.

This bake was in fact planned for a 40th birthday party in a park today, but the party was cancelled due to the increasing number of storms we have been having. We had another storm this morning, similar to last Saturday.

Last week I made two batches of baguettes, using David's formula for Rustic Sourdough Baguettes after Phillipe Gosselin.

It has been almost a year since I first made the “80% Sourdough Rye with Rye-Flour Soaker” from Hamelman's Bread. At the time, I said it was my new favorite high-percentage rye bread, and I can't say its status has changed. Actually, it's been a while since I have made a high-percentage rye bread. I've been thinking about it, but Codruta's lovely bake of this bread finally inspired me sufficiently to do it.

Hello,

This is my latest endeavor in home-milled grain pasta. I began by milling 5 oz durum wheat, 2.5 oz hard red wheat, and 2.5 oz hard white wheat. I didn't do any sifting this time.



To the ground wheat I added:

1/4 teaspoon chipotle chile powder
1/4 teaspoon ancho chile powder
1/4 teaspoon smoked Spanish paprika
1/2 teaspoon ground annato powder



In a blender, I combined

2 room temperature eggs

Pre-dough:

600gr. Cold water

200gr.  Cracked rye

100gr. Cracked barley

100gr. Cracked spelt

200gr. Flour mixture

2 table spoons. Sourdough (from wild yeast)

Final-dough:

500gr. Cold water

650gr. Flour mixture

22g. Salt

2 table spoons. Malted barley syrup

2-3 table spoons. Nettle (Urtica dioica)

Baked these today from Bread Cetera. Very nice taste, and fun to make. Overnight levain, 20 min autolyse, 1 hr bulk ferment, 30 min rest, fold, slurry, cut, stack, 1.5 hr proof. Baked on its side 15 minutes @ 450F w/steam; bake w/o steam 25 min. 

Sending this to Yeastspotting.

Click here for my blog index.

This recipe was by Lumos, and was featured on TFL front page a while ago. I stuck pretty close to the original, with the following notes: