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Hi everybody,

Made two loaves using the method of spacing out bowl kneading and slowly developing gluten.  For one loaf, did the 3rd and 4th sets of kneading at 15% and 30% on the aliquot.  For the other, did them at 25% and 50%.  Wanted to see how far I could push fermentation with this method (starting with a low inoculation).

I had never heard this origin story for baguettes: that they came about as an attempt to cut down on knife fights in Paris by creating a loaf that met weight requirements but didn't require a knife to cut like boules and miches do.

Wikipedia lists a few other possible origins. Regardless, it makes a good story!

This is my submission to the Community Bake - The No Comfort Zone Bake.

The write up is here: 

Community Bake - The No Comfort Zone Bake | The Fresh Loaf

Cheers,

Gavin

In my quest to make a perfect, consistent, large miche (~2kg), I have made a slow transition from partially yeasted to my current formula, which is sourdough only, 80% hydration. I'm learning that different flours behave very differently, and many of my experiments have resulted in mud, pancake-flat loaves, giant air chambers, flying saucers etc. 

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

Ingredients (pre-warmed and maintained at 30-32C/86-89.6F throughout the process):

50% freshly ground, unsifted whole wheat (All the whole rye/wheat flours I bought are rancid.)

42% freshly ground, unsifted whole rye

8% whole rye CLAS

30% + 9% water

Here we report an experiment designed to increase a levain's natural yeast titre.  Possible* novel aspects are (1) an "Overnight" version of Raisin Yeast Water (ORYW) and (2) growing SD levain in undiluted RYW.  (*nihil sub sōle novum when it comes to bread baking but I don't recall seeing exactly this described before)

Materials & Methods

First loaf-bread bake with Patel's house brand 100% WW stone ground durum. For a picture of the bag, see here: https://www.thefreshloaf.com/comment/469299#comment-469299

It was $7.99 for a 20-pound bag, $.40/pound.  Ingredient list is just "durum whole wheat."  No enrichments.

I've done tortillas, pizza crust (didn't let it autolyse/soak enough), and noodles, but this was the first loaf bread with this flour.

Inspired by one of Ilya's recent posts about a rye bread, I decided to try a recipe from Maurizio Leo's site (The Perfect Loaf) for a rye bread with some seeds.  The night before the bake I prepared the levain, which consists of mature starter (47 g), rye flour (234 g of King Arthur White Rye Flour), and water (234 g).  At the same time I put roasted unsalted sunflower seeds (65 g), roasted unsalted pumpkin seeds (65 g), and whole flaxseed (30 g) in a bowl and added enough hot tap water (214 g) to submerge the seeds.  Both the levain and the soaker were covered with plastic w