Blog posts

I haven't made a miche in a very long time. Last week, I got a bag of high extraction ("Type 80") flour from Central Milling and remembered that I had previously (like 11 years ago!) used this kind of flour for a miche based on the San Francisco Baking Institute formula that I liked a lot. We had made this bread for the Artisan II (Sourdough) workshop. Although we used white flour, our instructor told us that, ideally, it would be made with a high-extraction flour. My experience indicates this formula makes delicious bead either way.

To learn more about concentrated lactic acid sourdough (CLAS), please see here and here. 

It must be the cooler weather that is encouraging more baking or perhaps the desire to check out breads that im going to be taking to functions or checking yeast quantities for timed yeasted doughs, but here is another. This is a dough using a mix called Super food blend from Aldi. i didnt make it a sweet dough as i envisage it being used on a cheese board at an 80 year old birthday celebration. happy with it but may end up making it into thinner sticks just right for cheese or plain butter. it should go well alongside the Parmesan and onion bread i did prior to this one 

I haven’t made a pizza in ages and had a hankering for sourdough pizza.  I’m made minor changes to how I ferment my sourdough pizza dough, I’ve realized that my pizza dough in the past had been underfermented.

Checking on the yeast quantities required for a 4 hour bulk fermentation 1.3% fresh compressed yeast seems to be about right The dough is a cheese and onion bread which i will be making again on the weekend for an 80th birthday celebration for one of my gym class mates

  5% raw brown onion and 10% shaved Parmesan cheese

Baked this earlier in the week. Pain De Campagne sourdough, using NYBakers Farine De Campagne flour. Came out GREAT! Lots of rise, and the crumb was amazing.

TFL'er bake list #4 this week, and this weekend's bake was Danni's Oat Porridge Bread.

A fun bake, and I learned a new technique by making a porridge.  The bread came out really good and has great flavor!  The crumb is nice and soft without being sticky.  Will definitely keep this one on the list.

Another savoury loaf, this time with a wild rice/exotic rice blend and dehydrated onions and a touch of honey. 

When I was mixing up the dough I noticed it was extremely soft. This was probably because I didn’t cook the rice the night before as per the recipe and that was probably a mistake as the rice ended up more hydrated than it should have. I added an extra 50 grams of flour to soak up some of the hydration. So word to the wise, make the rice the night before. 

Recipe 

Makes 3 loaves

700 g strong bakers unbleached flour + 50g

Discovered the whole wheat flour I've wanted to try for a long time available in a shop last week, and decided to use it in one of my typical recipes, with approximately 40% of this flour, and rest strong bread flour (and rye starter). Formula: https://fgbc.dk/1l1g

This week, I made an olive and cheese loaf, Queen Elizabeth cake (twice), and non-baked breads: steamed flower buns and horseshoe fritters (these are fried). 

For the loaf, I wanted a soft bread that stays soft until the last slice. I used pepper-stuffed olives - these gave specks of red together with the orange bits of old fort and marbled cheddar. I wasn’t sure if my starter was strong enough for this bake since I used it passed its peak.