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Today we had a first in-person lab meeting at work since the beginning of the pandemic, and I wanted to bring a loaf of bread to share with my colleagues. Usually we would have something sweet, like cake, at these meetings, so I wanted a flavourful bread on the sweeter side, that would also not require butter or any other topping, to enjoy. So I improvised with the ingredients (almost wrote "reagents") that I had: I selected dried cranberries, poppy seeds and grapefruit zest. I also added a little honey to the mix for a little additional sweetness.

 Well, it's been almost 6 months since my last post...this pandemic thing has been occupying lots of time and energy, so much so there's little left at the end of the day for even simple, everyday things like baking bread.  I am trying to stay optimistic as things continue to unfold but admit to being more discouraged than encouraged these past few days what with the growing social unrest, ongoing disruption of the way things used to be, ever increasing pressure on front line/first responders and economic/financial hardships all around.

I've decided to work on dense seeded rye breads this winter. This is my first attempt. The recipe is fairly straight forward - it's a blend of high extraction (I used whole) spelt and whole rye flours with a large number of sprouted rye berries. It includes sunflower, pumpkin, flax and sesame seeds. It calls for un-hulled sesame seeds which I didn't have so I used hulled. For liquids it uses buttermilk, dark malt and dark beer (I used Guinness) and water of course.

Here are the results:

Here you will find the three formulae for the three NY Jewish Bakery/Deli Rye Breads from the Community Bake for rye breads. Refer to the CB for details.

Aviso! For the first two breads do not proof the loaves directly on a couche.  They will stick mercilessly, the clean-up will be significant and may ruin your couche.  I have no experience using a dutch oven type of vessel with these, so I cannot advise what you should or shouldn't do.

Recap:

The wife has tasked me to come up with a sandwich bread recipe our family can bake at least once a weak to completely replace our regularly purchased box store sandwich bread.

This post is for the recipe for my third attempt to make the perfect loaf.

Requirements

I have just completed my second bake using Caputo Integrale  and my home brew stout. I made a few minor changes this time around, previously i made it a 50% wholemeal this time i opted to use equal wholemeal to the liquid in a soak  so it was 65% Caputo Integrale and 65% Stout i also added 0.5% dried yeast to the soak too and gave it 2 hours.

These are the results of my 2nd attempt. See the (2-recipe) blog post to see what the plan was.

Recap:

The wife has tasked me to come up with a sandwich bread recipe our family can bake at least once a weak to completely replace our regularly purchased box store sandwich bread.

This post is for the results of my second attempt to make the perfect loaf.

Requirements

These are the results of my first attempt. See the (1-recipe) blog post to see what the plan was.

Recap:

The wife has tasked me to come up with a sandwich bread recipe our family can bake at least once a weak to completely replace our regularly purchased box store sandwich bread.

This post is for the recipe for my second attempt to make the perfect loaf.

Requirements

Nov. 29, 2020.

This is my third attempt at the "Adventure Bread" from the Josey Baker Bread book. But, this is my first attempt to make it exactly as written. Previously, I swapped out the psyllium husk for other binders, but I never matched the absorbancy of psyllium, so it was overly wet, and the oats totally dissolved.  (IE., I violated my own rule of not making substitutions until after you make something at least once, so that you know what it is supposed to look like. Once you know what it is supposed to look like, then have fun with it.)