Blog posts

It might seem somewhat incredulous that there would be yet another bachelor party bake within two weeks of the previous one, but yes - seems many men in our circle are getting married. 

This was a somewhat small party of 5 men, so I produced but 2 durum semolina matera-type loaves and 2 five-grain five seed/nut loaves. These went down very well, with the semolinas being the clear preference.

I've had more than my fair share of experimental failures lately! This is the curse of being an experimental baker. My failures of late have included, amongst others and going through my baking notes, a 90% biga with raisin yeast water that took too long to rise, a sourdough made with a cool and stiff preferment, and a sourdough made at warm temperatures with a very very low inoculation. Some bakes have had whacky hydrations too...

This was hectic. Baked 12 loaves (2 of each type) and 3.5kg of granola for the bachelor's party that the husband was organizing. Prepped the levains all in the morning before I left for work (cycled to the train station in record time), and started mixing dough the moment I was home at 8 pm. Was done baking 10 loaves at 3:30 am, and then had to bake the oat loaves at 8 am as they need a much longer rise.

Oct

I adapted this from my porridge bread formula but used a small % of starter and soaked the grains overnight instead of cooking them as a porridge. I used fresh milled and sifted Butler’s Gold WW and Danko Rye with some KAF bread flour.

The Harvest Grain mix from KAF consists of Whole Oat Groats, Rye Flakes, Wheat Flakes, Sunflower Seeds, Sesame Seeds, Flaxseed, Poppy Seeds, and Hulled Millet.

Oct

It almost feels like fall here on Long Island if you don’t count the 70 F-degree days we had this week. Well, anyway, here is a nice pre-Thanksgiving type of bread made with roasted purple sweet potatoes and cranberries along with fresh milled whole wheat, spelt, and KAF bread flour.

We will be visiting friends tomorrow, and I wanted to bring a loaf of bread. We also ran out of bread, don’t know how that happens 😂, so decided to bake two loaves. I rarely bake more than one loaf. Since one of my Pullman pans is in Fort Lauderdale, I prepared the dough and after bulk fermentation divided it, shaped the one loaf, and cold retarded the other dough overnight to bake today. This worked out quite well.

Checked in to get a recipe check on Lucy's orange, cranberry chocolate chip,  raisin, pecan cinnamon rolls.  Couldn't remember the hydration.  They are rising.  Made half of them plain when the Judy said she preferred her rolls, and men,  plain.  Will post some pictures tomorrow about tje y=the last 3 years,  Just got my 6 month checkup on my new hip.  Nic to walk without a limo for the first time in 25 years.

The formula for this bread is from the second edition of Hamelman's Bread.  It's a 50/50 white/whole wheat bread with a multigrain soaker.  It is leavened with both a sourdough levain and a yeast kicker in the final dough.  The multigrain soaker composition is entirely up to the baker.  In this version, I used flaxseed meal, whole millet, and a blend that includes sunflower seeds and flaked wheat, barley, rye, and oats.

I figured out how to downsize an image. Used my flaked Kernza for my usual porridge bread. It just keeps getting better and better! Amazing tender open crumb. I took advantage of the information others posted to get more flavor out of the porridge step and just poured boiling water on the flaked grain and didn’t cook further. Worked perfectly.

Loaf is exceptionally tasty. Really deep flavour with very little sourness, excellent complex crust. Smoky, earthy and smooth. Definitely my best rye bread so far.

I wanted to try making a 60% rye (whole and medium 50/50) that was flavourful, not too sour, and had most of the rye in the pre-ferment so that the grains were more broken down (for flavour, but also digestibility), and BF and proof would be relatively fast, about 5 hours or so, with some sort of rise in the oven.