Blog posts

To learn more about concentrated lactic acid sourdough (CLAS), please see here and here. 

A few months ago Hotbake posted this bread: http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/61806/fermented-chickpea-sourdough. It looked amazing and it's been bookmarked since. I had some chickpeas and thought to give it a try this week. I didn't have enough chickpeas so I scaled the recipe down a bit and think I used much less water than the original post.

For my first attempt at baguette-making, I tried dmsnyder's San Joaquin baguettes.

Proccess

I followed the process detailed on the San Joaquin page as written,. Starter was being a bit slow, so bulk took 7-8 hours at ~72F, but got there eventually.

I haven't tried to make this bread in a while but went back it a few days ago.

Ingredients:

400g AP unbleached

2g diastatic malt powder (homemade)

2g gluten flour

80g 100% hydration starter

300g water

80g dried raisins soaked in 40g boiling water

40g brown flax

35g raw honey

20g sesame seeds

20g pumpkin seeds

20g poppy seeds

8g sea salt

We have a boatload of new participants on TFL, many drawn, or reacquainting themselves, to bread baking in the era of quarantine.  This write-up is for you!

I go back to basics once in a while, and re-familiarize myself with my baguette roots.

I humbly submit this week's baking epiphany: 

The optimal length for bulk fermentation of our house miche can be conveniently reduced to the following dress code:

• When wearing a sweater (UK: "jumper"), then 3 hours @ 78˚F (25˚C)
• When wearing a T-shirt (UK: Arsenal or Chelsea but not ManU), then 2 hours @ 78˚F (25˚C)

Flour is in short supply at many groceries now (not just here on the Big Island of Hawaii) ... and when we can find it, it may be bleached AP, or whole-wheat pastry flour.

Would love to hear how folks are making do with what a bread baker is able to find right now, and any tips.

Like everyone else, I'm baking sourdough breads, but among the things my kids mentioned missing during the quarantine were Red Bean Buns.

Trying to get open crumb with European  flours which only have 11.5g protein and do not take the high hydration common recipes call for. This is 74% which was pushing it. It also has 40% whole wheat spelt. 

This is my first time working with purple sweet potatoes.  I find that the flavour is slightly more floral than the more common orange variety.  I was hoping to have more oven spring from this but overall I’m fairly pleased with the bake.

To make about 900 g total dough 

Levain 20% 74 g 1:1:1 6 hours @ 78ºF

35 g starter 35 g water 35 g whole wheat flour 

Autolyse 2 hours

90% bread flour 331 g

10% white spring flour 41 g (I used Einkorn)

Diastatic malt 0.5% 2.045 g

Water 275 g