Blog posts

Learning how make Kefir and had 2 cups to discard and just couldn't waste it.... added about 340 grams of 2 day old red ww, 1 tablespoon of honey, 1/4 cup each of Bob's RM ground flax and Anthony's oat fiber and 1/2 cup of yeast water made from a mixture of organic raisins, organic blue berries and organic apples and honey from Curtis - a local company in La Belle. Mixed,covered and left on counter overnight - about 12 hours. Kitchen temp about 75-76 degrees.

The other day I decided to finally try my hand at a sourdough boule recipe. Amazingly to me, one of them was edible and dare I say pretty darn good. The other one was, well, let's just say that it was instructive. ;)

The first thing I did was to collect some healthy starter from a local flour mill. I also bought a bag of spelt flour from them. Now, what recipe to try? I decided to go with the mill's basic Sourdough Bread Formula. 

Ingredients:

I’ve made this once before and wanted to give it another go since I still have some Einkorn and wanted to inch up the % of it in the bake.  Being aware of the difficulty baking with Einkorn, I just increased the amount from about 10% to 13.5%.  The dough handled just fine.

Bread flour 71%

Whole Red Fife 15.5%

Whole Einkorn 13.5%

Prefermented flour 9%

Diastatic malt 0.5% 

Hydration 80% 

Levain 1:1:1 with whole red fife fermented 78ºF for 6 hours.

Autolyse 3 hours.

I've read/skimmed Richard Bertinet's bread books. It would be fun to take his courses at his school in Bath, England, but I live in the US and the courses are pricey. He's an advocate of the 'slap and fold' technique.

I came upon a newly launched video course web site, Learningwithexperts.com on which he has a course.

It's a four-part course that I bought. The site's pricing is interesting. In the US, the course is US$100. But in the UK, the course is £ 29, which is about US$37.

Ingredients:

• 100g Sourdough Starter (50/50 Hard Red Wheat)
• 286g Whole Red Wheat (Home Milled)
• 376g HEB Bread Flour
• 18g Salt

This recipe was derived from the following King Arthur recipe:
https://www.kingarthurflour.com/recipes/no-knead-sourdough-bread-recipe

With the following modifications:

I've been experimenting lately with left over starter. I'm creating a stiff Pate Fermentee with it and a few days later adhoc a recipe. The breads are fine but nothing wow yet. This was my recent attempt. I'm posting this for recording keeping more than anything else.

Pate Fementee was 1 part ripe starter, 2.5 part water and 4.5 part AP flour - or 60, 132 and 270 respectively. I left it out for an hour and then put it in the fridge.

Final dough was made two days later:

- 150g pate fermente

- 125g whole wheat flour

- 375g all purpose flour

-12g salt

It has been quite a while since I last baked with spelt. Spelt and emmer are similar in terms of their characteristic in dough. Working with them is always a pleasant experience for they produce a silky (read: not gluing to your hands like rye…) and extensible dough.

Temperature has been hitting 33°C these days, so it wasn’t at all surprising that the levain (1:5.5:5.5) got aerated within 3.5 hours. I didn’t plan very well so it had to go into the fridge for 3 hours before use.

My husband had a hankering for a rye bread....who can say no?

I grabbed my Hamelman, and went in search of a rye that had no commercial yeast and also was wholegrain.  I failed, so I modified his 65 percent sourdough rye to use only freshly milled grain.  I have to say - this is one of the tastiest rye breads I have had since I moved out of New York. 

Prepare sourdough -and then let it sit about 16 hours on the counter at about 20 degrees C

This bake was from a few weeks ago.  The spouted whole wheat and sprouted purple corn flour really added a special flavor and made this an extremely tasty bread.  I added some fresh ricotta cheese which really softens the crumb.

I made one large miche style bread and I was extremely happy with how the crust and crumb came out on this one.

Modern baking with commercial cultivars of wheat, blended flours, thermostat controlled ovens, and particularly commercial yeast is predictable. Yes, it takes skill, and there is always something to learn that will make the product better, but it is predicable. 

I have been grinding my own flour for a few years now, and every time I try new kinds of grain or new blends of grain, I have increased respect for the bakers of 500 or a thousand years ago.