Blog posts

         Hi. Here is a short introduction. I'm one of the newer Dave's on TFL. I'm 56, Canadian  and getting ready to retire. I spent my early years in open pit mining and oil field construction work. I spent a couple cold and interesting years in mine construction in the high Arctic. The last 16 years have been spent operating in the pulping and steam side of newsprint production. Now we're waiting for our house to sell in a slowing Alberta economy so we can move to our second home on Vancouver Island.

I needed to revive my grape starter (I dried it using [url=http://www.wildyeastblog.com/?s=drying+a+starter/]the method here[/url]) to make sure that it is still alive and happy.  And indeed it is.  I dried it a month and a half ago because it was getting too strong and active and I couldn't keep up with it.  It took me 4 days to bring it back from its sleep and on the 5th day (yesterday) I mixed up a batch of dough.

Hamelman's 5-grain Soudough made with rye sour is currently one of my favorite bread. The formula calls for high-gluten flour, but I have not had any for a while. I now have some KAF Sir Lancelot flour, and this is the first bread in which I used it. 

This is my first post ever! I am a graduate student who has a love for bread. I grew up in Hong Kong, and my favorite food as a child included 豬仔包 and 雞尾包 ("little pig roll" and cocktail bun). I have since immigrated to the US. As I grew older, my tastes have changed. I discovered the sourdough from Panera. Later, I would become acquainted with the wonderful spice that is cinnamon, which introduced me to cinnamon swirl and cinnamon raisin breads. When I visited the New York Chinatown, I became a fanatic for the raisin buns.

[u][b]My formula for the dough[/b][/u]:  

220 g organic stonegournd wholemeal starter @75% hydration 

400 g organic stoneground wholemeal flour (protein 14%+)

25 g water

270 g fat free butter milk

9 g salt   

(final dough weight 924 g and dough hydration 74% ) 

http://chausiubao.deviantart.com/art/CaP-2-127364147

Further improvements on my white bread included three changes.

1.) Salt-less autolyse period

2.) Decreased amount of preferment

3.) Decreased hydration

Because an autolyse is meant to increase extensibility, salt would be a bad addition, this would counter the decrease in extensibility of a drier dough. However, I should be able to score these loaves because they are drier.

http://chausiubao.deviantart.com/art/CaP-1-127362078

A good white bread was made yesterday. This was my attempt to bring together all the techniques I've been learning about from books and this site.

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Formula:

 100%  Bread Flour

 70%    Water

 1.33% Salt

 0.8%   Instant Yeast

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Method:

I think I forgot to post in the Introductions Forum, so I'll make up for that here...

I'm Keith, and I live in Long Beach, CA, near the Orange County border. That puts us about 40 ft. or so above sea-level, if you find that interesting!

[b][u]My formula[/u][/b]  

190 g rye starter @100% hydration

95 g Rye meal unbleached flour

95 g organic stoneground whole meal flour

95 g KAF Sir Lancelot flour

50 g water

204 g orange juice

7 g salt Quinoa for dusting  

final dough weight 640 g    dough hydration 67%  

A good friend of mine sent me this recipe last weekend. She and her husband used to eat this excellent appetizer or meal at Sayat Nova in Chicago many decades ago. She was pleased to see that it is still on their menu after all those years!