Blog posts

pH guided dough development and baking decisions

Profile picture for user Benito

You may know that I have recently started using a new pH meter, the Hanna bread and dough meter.  I have wanted for some time to use pH to help guide decisions during dough development including when to start cold retard.  My interest really peaked when I was trying to bake a decent 100% whole red fife sourdough loaf and ran into issues including gluten breakdown.  So I am now first trying to discover what the ideal pH is to shape ending bulk fermentation and when to start cold retard.

 

Cranberry Feta with Toasted Sunflower Seeds Sourdough

Profile picture for user Danni3ll3

 

 

My starter is back to its old self! Love the oven spring I got on these. 

 

Recipe

 

Makes 3 loaves

 

Add ins:

150 g dried cranberries

75 g crumbled feta

60 toasted sunflower seeds (I buy raw and toast them in a dry frying pan)

 

Main dough:

700 g Strong Bakers Unbleached Flour

200 g freshly milled Spelt flour 

100 g freshly milled Durum flour 

700 g filtered water 

20 g pink Himalayan salt

30 g yogurt

Brown and white checkerboard loaf and the easiest cookie: Banana+coconut

Profile picture for user Kistida

This was supposed to be a laminated and braided loaf. I decided to use a similar recipe to my molasses bread in this loaf, together with some 6-day old sourdough discard (calculated so I can use all the discard).

Brown and white checkerboard loaf

Brown dough
10g all purpose flour (Tangzhong)
50g milk (Tangzhong)
65g sour milk*
45g SD discard (100%)
120g all purpose flour
15g Kamut flour
50g rye flour
3g caraway seeds

Seeded whole wheat pan loaves with CLAS

Profile picture for user Ilya Flyamer

Followed a very similar procedure to the recent seeded whole spelt bread I posted, again following Rus Brot's process: I took his recipe for whole wheat bread and added seeds. The dough was super slack after the final mix, so I added a little extra flour, but still it was weaker than I would have liked. But baking in a pan solves this sort of issues! Here is the formula: https://fgbc.dk/1p57

25% whole wheat "sourdough" with CLAS - repeated

Profile picture for user Ilya Flyamer

I wanted to repeat the same bake, but adjust after seeing the results. I reduced the yeast to slow down the fermentation, and reduced the hydration. Unfortunately, I accidentally overshot the temperature A LOT (I wanted around 25, but got over 30), so the fermentation was very fast even with just 1g IDY, and I only extended bulk by about 30 min. Despite lower hydration, the dough was still surprisingly slack. I wonder if it's just because it started out very warm, or CLAS doesn't strengthen the gluten like regular sourdough does, for some reason.

Portuguese Buns

Profile picture for user GlennM

I have been wanting to try these for a while, we live in an area where there are many Portuguese bakeries and these are a big hit 

Simple enough to make:

520 gr bread flour

120 gr warm milk

180 gr warm water

35 gr butter

7 gr yeast

teaspoon of sugar

add the yeast to the water, milk and sugar (let proof for 10 min)

put the flour and salt in mixer bowl with the butter

add the yeast mixture and run the mixer on low for 2 min, crank up the speed a couple of notches and knead for 5-7 min until you get a nice smooth dough

Methods and Rationale for Sourdough Starter Maintenance and Elaboration

Profile picture for user Doc.Dough

Since the facility for uploading fully formatted Word and PDF documents has not been implemented, the details of this post can be found here and I have loaded (above and below) a pictographic shorthand version which lacks any explanation of the rationale.  The artwork covers the whole bread-making process of which the illustration above covers starter maintenance, elaboration into a levain, and then using the levain to initiate a batch of bread dough.  The linked paper covers only the starter maintenance and