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I’ve been experimenting the last bunch of bakes with something new for me. Instead of doing a short bulk at around 78-80 F and then finishing the bulk in the refrigerator for 12-34 hours, I’ve been doing a longer bulk at 80 F and letting the dough rise around 30%. I have then been doing a pre-shape letting it sit for 15 – 20 minutes and then shaping and placing in bannetons, covering and putting it in the refrigerator for 12 hours and baking right from the refrigerator.

Edit: Formatting fixed. That's better!!

There is a post from the long distant past (2017) on this site, by Wendy (Lazy Loafer) describing one of her bread tasting open house experiments where different sourdough loaves were made each with a different flour making up 25% of the flour.

Today's bake: East Berlin Malt Rye -  Malfabrot (Germany)

Source: The Rye Baker by Stanley Ginsberg

Notes: None

Substitutions:  None

June 28 is Double Pi(e) Day!

2π = 2(3.14) = 6.28   :) 

I don't know if these can be technically considered as pies but they have a crust, they have a filling; they can pass as pies to me. Here they are:


Mango Gâteau Basque. I put a twist on the French classic by using our local mangoes that are in season right now. I used not so ripe mangoes to offer a tart balance to the rich custard like what cherries do in the original. The contrast between the crumbly crust and the creamy filling with the fragrant mango punch is just delightful!

I decided to bake a second loaf today on a whim to bring with us on our visit to my inlaws.  I didn’t plan ahead so an instant dry yeast leavened loaf was the only thing to do.  I had a bottle of pesto in my cupboard that has been staring at me every time I opened the cupboard so decided to do this laminated bread which I gave a fancy name even though it isn’t all that fancy to make, although it looks it.

We are heading to my in-laws house this long weekend for a visit.  I wanted to bring bread because when we had our vacation from our vacation in Florida with them this past winter I didn’t have time to bake bread for them.  I still had some mashed purple sweet potato in the freezer from my stash last year so decided that this might be a good use of 100 g of it.  The only change from this bread from my previous bake is the addition of smoked paprika.  I was going to add cinnamon but wanted the bread to be more savory than sweet.

I wanted to bake something today that wasn’t too involved and didn’t plan for a bread.  I looked through my recipes that I have saved on my iPad and decided to make this zucchini cake.  The zucchini isn’t something that you’ll taste, but it adds fibre and liquid to the batter since you do not dry it out after grating it.  I love chocolate so the chocolate chips interested me.  finally, I still had some cream cheese in the fridge from my last cake that called for it so it was easy to decide on this cake.

I've recently picked up baking again, in particular sourdough. My baking mostly occurs at sea level in CA, but I am spending part of summer at our house near West Yellowstone at 6,800 ft.

I brought my starter with me and did my first bake here. I anticipated altitude-related problems, but it turned out fine (I made a few adjustments).

The formula was:

It has been a while since I did anything creative with my bread making. If there is such a thing as a "comfortable rut", our usual 75-100% whole grain sourdough sandwich bread has been just that. With the pending visit of a family member, I was inspired to dust off the clay baker and do something more creative for her. My scoring skills are rusty could use some work (they were never all that great really), but otherwise it looks pretty good so far. It's cooling at the moment; I'll edit and add a crumb shot later as time allows.