Blog posts

Great success once again with the flaked grains made into porridge. I used a white flour levain a whole wheat levain and Apple Yeast Water .  Flaked Einkorn was toasted  in my iron skillet in 3T butter till fragrant and golden. Cooked in a double boiler with 40g honey till water absorbed. Cooled to room temp and used my KA to fold it and the salt into the autolysed dough. A couple of bench folds and then a sunny window for bulk ferment. Overnight shaped retard , these are 1100g boules.

I actually baked this twice now because I thought I had severely overproofed my first loaf.  After shortening the bench final proof before cold retard on my second loaf to compensate the second loaf was more or less the same.  Unfortunately I believe that this flour is too soft for me to bake at 100% as a hearth loaf.  It is hard to believe the difference between this loaf and the one I very recently baked at 75% red fife.  If my belief that red fife is too lacking in gluten is incorrect please let me know, I’m interested in hearing your ideas.

I don’t remember the last time I made a cobbler, and I was looking at my final half bag of frozen rhubarb sitting in my freezer that a friend gave me last spring from his garden and thought time to make a cobbler.  Of course, also feeling lazy I decided to buy frozen strawberries instead of fresh.  Although that is the lazy route, the frozen ones are much better than the fresh I can get this time of year so this should be better than fresh.  I don’t recall where I found this recipe that I’ve had saved in my Notes app for some time so cannot give the author credit.

Today's bake was based on this method with really only a change in hydration to suit my flours.  That, and I made a sandwich loaf versus a boule.

Bench resting.  Crap I forgot to put the cinnamon sugar inside.  I guess I'll just have to sprinkle it on top of the loaf before it goes into the oven. It won't be a "swirl" anymore.  I can't wait to bake this loaf.  The fermentation of the walnuts release a pretty purple hue into the dough around it.  

So round 10 one night I thought, "be nice to take fresh bread in to work..."

so I mixed, in the bottom of my mixer bowl.

1 3/4 Cup lukewarm water and 1 1/2 tsp active dry yeast

                          While it sat for 10 min I poured

1/4 cup boiling water over

3 tbsp of cooking molasses and

1 tbsp Brewers Wort

Secret formula folks ;) 

I wanted to post more data to help those interested in a fool proof way to flake grains. My last post was using rye in my Marga  Mulino Flaker and utilizing the technique I discovered on the Blog Foodprepper. 

I have even more positive proof that this is the best and easiest way to prepare and flake grains. I chose Einkorn grains as they are reputed to be “ too hard” to flake. Well with this method as you will see it’s simplicity itself. 

I have been getting much more relaxed about my bakes these days, a welcome improvement. My current mindset: it's bread. Nobody is dieing, nobody needs CPR, and the world will not come to an end if it doesn't come out the way I expected. And who knows what I may learn from the experience. 

The Tartine method is how I got started in sourdough baking and is still the basis for most of my sourdough loaves in its intention of making a open crumb bread with a less sour flavor. Lately I had been playing it safe by keeping the hydration at 75% and not risking over fermenting.