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.
Because I did not want to throw out some left over starter, I made Flo's 123 formula. I thought it turned out pretty good. Loaf got cut before I got a pic, but have pics of what was not consumed. Every body here rated it good, but to me it didn't have the degree of sour tang to it that I like. Crust was definitely chewy and the crumb was chewy also. Overall it was a good bake.
Formula:
250 grams White Starter (67% hydration)
We broke up a jack-o-lantern for soup the other day (just a regular pumpkin, not a sugar-pie or anything, not a pumpkin especially for eating but of course edible). Had a couple cups of mashed baked pumpkin left over, so I thought I'd see what happened when I put it in bread. I wasn't expecting much flavor, since the regular pumpkins just don't have that much. The answer, in short, was: Eh, it's bread. Sort of moist.
The long answer:
Evening of Day 0:
This is my recipe of a 50% sourdough spelt.
After reading several posts about Hammelman's Vermont sourdough with increased whole grain I decided to give it a try. I've been impressed with my results from the basic Vermont Sourdough and this version didn't let me down either. I found the errata sheet on the web here: ( http://mellowbakers.com/ErrataSheetJune2010.pdf ) and used those amounts to put the formula together. I proofed one loaf in the kitchen (~67 degrees) and the other in the garage (~50 degrees) to account for the extra time the second loaf wou
I've been attempting to improve my baguette making skills over the past few weeks. This weekend I came up with my own formula based on a few of the things I learned from my last effort's with Pat's (proth5's) baguette formula. Most notably I wanted to come up with a relatively low hydration formula using AP flour. I also wanted to get a bit of whole wheat flour in the mix as well, and come up with enough dough to make two decent sized baguettes . With that in mind I came up with the following formula which I calculate to be at 66% total hydration:
I can't recall I ever had whole-wheat pizza. It sounds rather un-Italian but I want to experiment a little and see how the whole-wheat pizza would turn out. It would be great if it works so that we can, at least, claim that it's wholegrain pizza and somewhat a healthy choice, even though it is fully loaded with cheeses, chorizo, and etc, lol.
I used pizza base recipe from Peter Reinhart's The Bread Baker Apprentice and replaced 70% of bread flour with whole wheat flour.
A while ago I bought a new baking book full with mouth watering photos of gorgeous looking loaves: "Brot", an introduction to Germany's best bakers and their signature breads. Luxurious as this book is, its principal purpose seems to be promoting culinary travels to the featured bakeries, not giving readers understandable instructions on how to make those lovely loaves at home.
