Blog posts

It’s time to bake Xmas loaves for my group but this year, I decided to bake only one kind and since wild rice with cranberries seems to be the most popular, this was it! This is the same recipe as here: http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/61462/wild-rice-sourdough-cranberries%C2%A0

However, for some reason the dough was moving super slowly so I gave it an extra coil fold and let it rise until it hit the 30% increase mark. 

Got some lovely oven spring and good crumb with this 80% sprouted whole spelt loaf (70% hydration). Very pleased how this turned out. I mixed the dough up around 6:30 pm -- no complicated process, I mixed everything together all at once. Let it rest for about an hour, then performed four stretch and folds in the bowl every half hour over the next two hours.

Goals: 90% whole grain, 1 kg of dough,  88% hydration, 1.9% salt, 10% pre-fermented flour.

Nov 28, 2019.

6:05pm, intitial mix:  363 g home milled Prairie Gold HWSW, 65 g home milled Kamut, 50 g King Arthur unbleached all-purpose flour 11.7% protein, (478 g flour so far), 394 g water, 15 g vital wheat gluten, 1/8th tablet of 500 mg vitamin C.

(Just now noticed that I did not include the VWG in the total flour.)

I started out to make Ru's seeded sourdough which I love.  I ran out of levain (didn't calculate properly) so added in the left over from the first refreshment of the refrigerated starter.  I am not sure how much water I added to it to thin it from 66% hydration - a dumb move as it was quite thin when I used it. 

12 midday - toasted 15 g chia seed, 37 g sesame seed and 22 g flaxseed. I had blitzed sesame and flaxseed a little in the coffee grinder. I then added 55 g water but it sucked it all up so I added another 55 g water and left to soak.

After my last attempt I decided to reduce the autolyse time and see if it helped.  I made 2 x 600gm loaves - one had 1 hour autolyse, the other had 2 hour autolyse.  I withheld 20 gms water in both and found this made a huge difference.  I did 100 SLAFs, rested 5 minutes then added salt and did another 100 SLAFs.  

I bought a boatload of spelt berries and have been using them bit by bit in all of my bakes, but I decided to try a loaf that was 45%+ whole grain using 25% spelt, hard red winter wheat (Redeemer) and rye. I tried the Full Proof Baking method of making two separate doughs, one whole grain and one white, and then laminating them together. I also divided the dough into 2 loaves during the lamination stage, which Full Proof Baking recommends. I've always divided during the shaping stage. 

 Visiting Altamura's two famous bakeries (Oct 2019)

I first read about Daniel Leader's experience in Altamura about a year and a half ago.  So enchanted by the rich history of Altamura's DOP bread that I said that I had to go to Altamura whenever I visited Italy.

Hi - I am new to this forum and breadmaking but I have just acquired a Morphy Richards 48220 breadmaker.  The instruction manual explains really well about the different types of yeast and states that all the recipes use the active dry yeast and not the quick rising type. 

I purchased some Allinson's dry active yeast (see photo) but the instructions on the Allinson can (100g) say that the yeast has to be activated un warm water before use and is not suitable for bread makers.   

I’ve been away for the last couple of weeks due to an impromptu trip to Oklahoma City for a horse show and then another trip to Las Vegas where my daughter ran her second half marathon. She did amazing finishing well in the top half even though she hadn’t trained for 5 weeks due to an arthritic flare.

It feels good to get back to baking. A friend requested a loaf with whole grains. So some oat porridge, some Fed Fife, some Einkorn with a touch of honey and butter!

Recipe 

Makes 3 loaves 

Fattoria degli Usignoli in San Donato in Fronzano, Tuscany. Spectacular Tuscan scenery and only thirty minutes from Florence by train. This will be our 10th year at Fattoria and will actually be our 17th course there. The 5-day course will run from Saturday 2 May until Wednesday 6 May, 2020.