Blog posts

The community bake provided the excuse to bake a simple ciabatta recipe that a friend has been baking for years.

It is the exact opposite of my recent sourdough breads in almost every dimension: instant yeast, has no autolyse, uses sugar, is super rapid, no wholewheat, etc etc. Even for an instant recipe it is fairly minimalist eschewing the biga or couche or anything that would complicate the life of the home baker for whom the original recipe was intended.

Sometimes it is fun to try something radically different, and it reminded me of what was possible in bread baking.

I’ve been making quite a few porridge breads lately so for a change, I used a soaker. This made for a much wetter dough. I’m happy that I decided to hold back 50 g of water and see how the dough was before adding it in. It wasn’t needed so I left it out of the recipe. If you include the soaker ingredients as part of the flour, the hydration is close to 85%. My dough would have been soup with that extra 50 grams! 

Recipe

Makes 3 loaves 

Soaker 

60 g Spelt flakes

60 g Kamut flakes

My wife and I really enjoy these rolls or buns made out of the same dough as Spiced Cheese and Herb Sourdough (E. Hadjiandreou). I like to bake them so that they have a crackly crust.

Since yesterday was my day off, and the weather was a crisp 30 degrees outside, it seemed the perfect time to do some baking. I used a recipe that I tried the first time last year with great success. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to use a pate fermentee this time, so resolved to let the loaf sit longer in its fermentation to balance out.

Sesame crusted purple sweet potato sourdough sandwich loaf. Followed FullProofBaking formula as follows with some minor modifications.  

I've been on a sandwich loaf kick lately since Danny introduced me to the whole grain sandwich loaf through one of the community bakes on this site. I'm not getting enough steam in the oven so the crusts tend to be dull, but I'm fine with it. 

In no particular order:

1. Bagels from The Perfect Loaf but I made them with a good portion whole wheat. I liked these, but Maurizio says to bake the sheet pan on top of cast iron and the bottoms burned well before the tops browned so I wouldn't follow that instruction again. 

2. Baby Ruth

My father requested pumpernickel bread for Thanksgiving sandwiches so I found this Breadtopia recipe to try. Of course I didn't really follow the recipe, but I did do 50% KABF and 50% home milled rye flour, the fennel seeds, molasses, and orange rind. I threw in some beer just because I had an open bottle from a previous bake. I'm not happy with how thick the ear is on the Batard - looks like the bread might be a bit underproofed, but I'm sure it will still be flavorful. 

Can somebody slap and fold me??

Ever since discovering this place, I've enjoyed reading and learning all sorts of new things and making online friends. I'd spend hours on my little phone reading article after article...

And then I stumbled onto something I never knew existed, The Fresh Loaf Handbook! 

I was searching about salt and one of the pages was at the top of the list. And it was a part of a larger, most excellent handbook.

Had an excellent bake yesterday. Excellent, because I pushed a lot of boundaries and broke some of my bread baking rules and was still rewarded with excellent bread! I love when that happens, because I get to learn a lot when that happens. As a baseline, I tried to keep the recipe similar to first attempt at Sourdough Focaccia.

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/66162/first-attempt-sourdough-focaccia-79-hydration

Rules I Broke: