Blog posts

I'm still working on learning to bake with 100% whole spelt since I received a lovely Christmas present of a 2 kg bag of Anita's Organic Whole Spelt from the mill!  So to also learn about about the use of a stiff sweet levain I thought I'd use one in this non enriched dough for the first time.  As you may know having a significant amount of sugar in the starter creates osmotic pressure causing the microbes to dehydrate.  This has a greater negative effect on the LAB than it does on the yeast.

I've been meaning to make these sablés for some time.  I've adapted a recipe I found in Jennifer Lapidus' book Southern Ground.

YIELD: ABOUT 40 COOKIES

240g (2⅔ cups) whole-rye flour

270g (2¼ cups) whole einkorn flour

390g (1¾ cups) unsalted butter, at room temperature

180g (1 cup) granulated sugar, plus more for sprinkling, I would use turbinado sugar for coating in the future rather than granulated

½ teaspoon fine sea salt

100g (4 ounces) bittersweet chocolate, chopped

For 20 cookies

Jan. 6 - 7, 2022.  78th bake.  RYE!  

This will be my first attempt at a 100% rye. I'm kind of following Denisa's post here: 
https://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/67054/100-whole-grain-rye-sourdough-bread

The goal is to divide her formula by 3 and make one loaf of about 835 g.

Summer here where I live. Family favourite; Base is Neapolitan pizza dough. 

Margherita pizza from our backyard brick oven. Hard to beat.

Jan 4, 2022.

This is a remake of #71, scaled for 3 clay pots (4" diameter at top), but will be baked in regular sized muffin cups.

Soaker: 

Happy New Year everyone. I'm back in Switzerland after holidays and baked my first bread with the local Ruchmehl flour - a Swiss version of high extraction flour. I followed a very simple recipe from https://www.homebaking.at/ruchbrot/

So, I got this gorgeous new pan but was at a bit of a loss as to what to do as I had no recipe for it. I found this recipe here https://myloveofbaking.com/sourdough-sandwich-bread-pullman/ and it looks and tastes great!

It is time for another two pizza nights as it had been some time since our last pizzas.  If you haven’t tried tuna on pizza you owe it to yourself to try it.  Make sure you buy good Italian tuna in olive oil, not the North American canned tuna because the Italian tuna is so much better.  Since trying it several years ago I just can’t eat other canned tuna anymore, they are just lacking something in both texture and flavour.

For 4 9” pizzas NY style thin crust 200 g each 

Levain Build 100% hydration 35 g needed 

So I found this volume measurement-based Cream cheese bun recipe. I set out to just covert the formula to mass measurements, However, I was slightly uncomfortable with the statement, "more flour may be needed." At that point, I set out to determine the baker percentage and hydration. At this point, it became crystal clear why the formula might need "more flour." I determined (if my mathematics and assumptions are correct) over 90% hydration. I tweaked this on the front side for a more manageable 61% hydration. Seeing as the recipe called for a yield of 30 buns.