Blog posts

It has been a while since I have posted on The Fresh Loaf. I have been baking just as much as usual, but I have settled on favorite breads that I have shared at least once already. I decided I would post again only when I baked something new, at least new to me, that I thought was really good and worth recommending to other bakers for them to also try.

Alfanso's recent blog post about the classic baguettes that he made, gave me the inspiration to try my hand at baguettes again (I did reasonably well in my first foray, but just hadn't made them again in a few years.  I followed the recipe and process from Alfanso's blog entry to the letter, except for extending my bulk proof to 90 minutes, and reducing the retarded portion to 3 hours.  They came out......ok.  I'm definitely out of shape from a shaping perspective, my scoring needs practice, and I think I prefer a 330g dough weight instead of 310g.

Today's bread is made from fresh ground, sifted Hard Red Spring wheat from Montana Flour and Grains

Very basic bread - 

400 gr bolted fresh ground flour

320 gr water (80%)

8 grams salt

30 gr olive oil

2 tablespoons honey

60 grams levain (stiff starter ~65% hydration)

Process:

2 hr autolyse flour and water

Mix dough including autolyse, levain and salt - let rest ~30 min

mix in honey and oil.

Bulk ferment until nearly doubled (~4 hr as warm room temp)

Another blog entry aimed at our wave of new levain/SD bakers on TFL.

What happens when I don't refresh my starter, but then decide to make a bread?  I last refreshed my 100% hydration AP starter either on April 24th or May 1st.  My refresh history chart is a little unsure of itself.  But I had plenty of starter/levain ready to use.  Now, I know the drill because I've been there before, but many of you may not.

Here we have a signature Roadside Pie King bake. The hallmarks of which are, the final product looks impressive, yet the result is relatively easy to accomplish. 

 This pie features, pasta frolla (Italian sweet short pastry) filled with homemade from scratch chocolate cream (pudding)

Enjoy the photo montage...

So, I have made a sourdough starter, like everyone else this quarantine, to keep me occupied and learn something new. I have been keeping a journal in a notebook to record recipes and changes I make, but since I started this account I thought it would be fun to document it here as well, for anyone else feeling a little intimidated by their first starter and just for me to look back on.

Day 1: The starter is born! (31 Mar 2020)
1 cup white flour (all the store had) and 1 cup water, mixed in a jar covered with cloth and left on the counter. 

On the weekend we decided that it’s been much too long since I’ve made pizza.  So using the same recipe for sourdough pizza that Will shared with us all during the Community Bake, I put together 4 dough balls so we could have four 9” pizzas over two days.  I didn’t use the diastatic malt, but I think without it I could allow the dough to cold ferment much longer.  Usually I bake after 48-72 hours in the fridge, today’s bake was the 48 hour cold ferment.  I’m thinking without the diastatic malt 72-96 hours would probably be even better.

 He needs steak and potatoes too!

 #NYCUTSTEAK

I thought it would be good to write a few things down that I have learned in my milling and baking adventures.

When I first started baking (I started with 100% WW from the beginning) I used to knead in a stand mixer but I couldn't make good bread. After a lot of trial and error, I'm making consistently good 100% ww bread from home milled flour, both sourdough and conventional dry yeast. The key for me is an autolyse combined with the right hydration (between 70 to 80%). This means that there's not much kneading required in any of my breads.