Blog posts

My first post here!

I've been baking sourdough bread for the last few months (ever since yeast completely disappeared from the shops for a while here in the UK), having never baked any bread before. I have produced some frisbees a couple of times and a few times made gorgeous loafs.

But I only just now started trying rye. Coming from Russia, it's something I miss here (although I've never been a big fan of rye breads, I guess you don't know what you like until you can't have it!). So I decided to bake it myself.

This is a nice dinner bread I like to make when the herb garden is in full swing.  The thyme and sage give it a wonderful savory touch that is not too heavy.  You can adjust the herb amounts to taste. Dried herbs are more concentrated, so I use smaller amounts than fresh.

60 g 100% hydration starter (active)

300 g water

300 g bread flour

90 g whole wheat flour

8 g salt

2 Tblsp. finely chopped fresh sage

2Tblsp. finely chopped fresh thyme

I am having trouble deciding if this is a good crumb or fools crumb. I have underfermented breads before and they were very dense, but this loaf was not dense. Light and airy. It just has a unique pattern of bubbles. The bulk ferment was 4.5 hours at 76F. Followed by a cold proof for 14 hours. Any feedback or tips would be great. Thanks

I made a new sourdough starter a few weeks ago and this was it's inaugural loaf of bread! I went with a no-knead method for this first one instead of my typical bread with stretch and folds. I was going for simplicity on this one and I wanted to make a video about my no-knead process. Below is the video and the process:

Ingredients

KA Bread Flour - 450g

Rye Sourdough Starter 100% hydration - 74g (Was going for 70 but overshot)

Water - 300g

Salt - 10g

Video

Method

...just kidding, there's no butter sandwich. But, I baked another loaf this morning. I made A LOT of starter for some reason, and went on a long weekend. The levain was put in the fridge and three days later it was a pile of bubbly mush. 

"I'm tired of believing I need to ferment sourdough with a fresh levain.." I thought to myself. So, I decided to bake a loaf of bread with 3 day old, cold levain—without refreshing it one little bit. 

I stuck with a safe 75% hydration recipe of mine and trusted my beast of a starter. 

This is a strange and turbulent time...a viral pandemic upon us, the world in an ongoing struggle to survive and the best and worst of humanity on display every day. There is little comfort to be found anywhere as the debates, misinformation, disuptes and yes, death and suffering as a result of covid-19 fill our days.

So I got a bag of Bob's whole wheat flour for the first time since it was super on sale, and I was surprised how fine grounded it was! Again I've never had the patience sifting bran or do long autolyse these days.

So this is my usual faux autolyse procedure, dough was at around 92-93% hydration and I was surprised how fluffy it turned out at 100% whole grain with add-ins.

I guess this V3.0, or V2.1, or V1.2.  Who's knows, and more importantly who cares?

Plans and results laid out the other day, I thought I could do better.

Changes from last time:

This bake was new territory for me for 3 reasons...

Experimenting with yeast water. A marriage of my passions....wildcrafting, fermenting and ? .direct mix. 80% hydration with wild elderberry fermented water biga. 

6 hour bulk,  4 stretch and folds, 6 hour proof  

I also made focaccia with the same technique. I discovered this method in a book by the brilliant Italian bakers Carlo di Cristo, Ezio Marinato, Cristian Zaghini and Pierluigi Sapiente

"Le Fermentazioni Spontanee nei prodotti da forno"