Blog posts

Whole Wheat Oatmeal Sandwich Bread

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This was my first legit attempt at homemade bread, a whole wheat oatmeal bread. The recipe is from Kim Boyce's "Good To The Grain" cookbook, and is made in one day, using active dry yeast, regular whole wheat flour, oatmeal and unbleached bread flour, and a very short 30-minute autolyse before kneading and proofing. It's a great beginner's recipe.

Rye kernel & flax seed sourdough

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Made a couple of loaves today that went over well with the Taiwanese in-laws, and that I am pretty happy with.  My usual whole wheat sourdough base, with ~30% added high gluten white flour, and about 1 1/2 cups of rye kernels (soaked overnight, then brought to a boil and then left to soak another few hours) and about 1 cup of flax seeds (soaked overnight), and ~1+% salt.  Probably about 9 cups flour total, plus the extra seeds, making a couple of large loaves.  My sourdough, which I have been keeping in the fridge 100% of the time since coming to Taiwan, hasn't yet developed

Whole Wheat Ciabatta

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I'm new to the Fresh Loaf website, and a new student of home bread-baking. I want to chronicle my journey on this blog, and I'm definitely after that ultimate taste and texture in creating bread.  

About that sponge...

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Or was it 2 cups of starter, 1 cup filtered water and 1 cup of unbleached white bread flour?  I can't even remember.  That's why I've decided to make use of this blog; keep a track of everything I'm doing.  I left it to ferment overnight and in the morning it was frothy and spongy, but it didn't seem to have grown at all.  Is it supposed to?

Baking Baking,,,,

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Today, I made several bread using TFLers fomula. All of them are delicious.

First, I made mutigrain (100% whole wheat flour used) using Franko's formula.  I decreased the water amount down to 9% compare to the original one.  I have make his original one at the first time  that was a failure that the crumb was really tight.  The flavor was great but the texture was dry. I was kneading too much...    Anyway I will challenge the original one when I get spelt flour because it is a great recipe!

very wet dough

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I made my old standby yesterday and today, 123 sourdough.  The dough was very wet;  I must have either a >100% starter or I mismeasured.  I used only white flour, and I know that that sometimes leads to wetter doughs, but I've made 100% white before and it wasn't a problem.  It was extraordinarily hard to shape and work with.  I made a double batch;  4 loaves.  two rose in small bowls in the fridge overnight and two rose in loaf pans.  Not a lot of oven spring on the "boules" but the loaf pans gave more support and they turned out better.

Saturday's bake: Sourdough with a bit o' rye

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I've been playing with bwraith's no-knead sourdough formula and tried to adjust it for the vagaries of October in Wisconsin.  I've landed on what seems to be a fine method (for October in Wisconsin).  

 

With apologies to bwraith, whose baker blog I've been stalking, here's the formula I used:

 

50 g 100% hydration starter

320 g water

450 g flour (roughly 10% rye, 45% each AP and Dakota Maid bread flour)

9 g salt