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Hello all. This morning I baked guided by Maurizio Leo's Spelt, Rye and Whole Wheat Sourdough recipe, a 50 percent whole grain formula.

I've recently landed here at TFL on a quest to bake a bread made of one half or more home-milled grain that I really like - that I can't help but grind,  mix, rise, shape and bake over and over again. The whole grain in this bake is home-milled, made of organic spelt, rye and Yocora Rojo hard red spring wheat all sourced from Breadtopia.

I haven’t been feeling great about my baking lately, I’d been over proofing my bread and really disappointed in how they turned out.  I decided that I needed to go back to a recipe that I’d made many times when I first started to bake sourdough, so I went back to Maurizio’s Beginner Sourdough from The Perfect Loaf.  For some reason the flavour of this bread always speaks to me.  However, I decided I still wanted some sort of add in, but one that wouldn’t negatively affect the crumb too much, so since I love sesame seeds I went with black and white sesame seeds.

today I decided to do an experiment and take the hydration of my dough to 100%. it is a sourdough bread and it contains about 15% whole spelt flour. the rest is white flour. the dough was very wet and challenging but the bread turned out well. the flavor was good and the crumb was open (not an easy task considering the the bad quality of bread flour in my country).

This is a rye-wheat bread that is apparently popular in France.  I got the recipe from Bernd's Bakery, a blog that I found through the blog of Stanley Ginsberg, the author of The Rye Baker (which is a masterpiece of a cookbook).  

Bernd's original blog post can be found here.

My (slightly adapted) formula:

PAIN DE METEIL

Liquid Levain

10 g starter (I used a 100% hydration rye starter)

If you are new to SD baking and still having problems with high hydration and complicated doughs, don't get your knickers all in a knot.  Instead drop the hydration down and get a solid footing with lower hydration breads first.  Although these are baguettes, the dough can easily be adapted to batards or boules.  So...

Two easy formulas that I recommend for you to get that feeling of accomplishment and dough handling skills are:

This is another recipe from Full Proof Baking.  This is really simple just keep the butter cold and you’re golden.  Don’t throw away your discard, there are so many things to make with your discard.

I had not made Hokkaido-style dough for some time. For the fluffyness of it, I decided to have a run yesterday and was pretty happy with the rise and softness of loaf and buns. The levain was built in two stages throughout a combined 12-hour period, where the first stage was 100% hydration, and the second stage was a stiff 50% version. All ingredients are supermarket off-the-shelf, and I realize now that I am running out of AP flour!

This is for all of the new bakers who want to tackle a Tartine recipe and get a sense of what to expect and look for during the various stages.

The Tartine Bread book begins with the Basic Country Bread, which is 90% all-purpose flour and 10% whole wheat flour.  With a 75% hydration, this can be a challenge for those who have not handled much dough, but the recipe is manageable, and making this bread will give you experience in recognizing the signs for when to move on from step-to-step (and when to be patient too).

This one I baked in a Big Green Egg. I can't say how it tastes, it's still warm.

Recipe here: https://breadtopia.com/whole-grain-sourdough/

This is a comprehensive look at my freezer batch method! Dough formula and sauce recipe included!