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Since I started my new job in the big city I have not had a lot of time to bake.  Last weekend I found enough time to whip this one together.  I used mostly freshed milled and sifted flours for this bake and added a little KAF Bread flour for some extra strength.  I have grown to love adding cooked rice to the bread.  You don't taste the actual rice but it adds a great texture to the crumb and helps promote softness as well.  The ricotta cheese also helps create a soft and moist crumb which this one certainly had.

I decided to bake Hamelman's 5 Grain Levain in a tin and mix in some AYW.  This was in an attempt to get more oven spring, and prevent sagging sides.  I used 20% AYW of total water, and shaped (somewhat unsuccessfully) for a tin.  The result was quite pleasing, but I suspect the tin resulted in a slightly gummy crumb, so next time I will remove the loaf and bake free-form for the final 10 minutes.  I also used baking spray on the loaf top to prevent the plastic bag from sticking during retard.  This resulted in a very dark top crus

Lovely recipe by Stanley Ginsburg from his site theryebaker.com

Stage 1 sponge (day one, morning):

• wholgrain rye flour 63g
• warm water 63g
• whole rye starter @ 100% hydration 7g

Left to mature for 10-12 hours.

Stage 2 sponge (day one, evening):

Decided on upping the starter to 150 so...

Starter 150g

Water 300

Flour 225 AP/225 BF

12g of salt 

Mixed it all up, let it rest for an hour

Looked at it and folded it every 2 hours for 6.5 hours 

Wonderful marshmallow texture when I put it in the bowl

Let it go in the fridge for 22 hours

Baked at the usual 450 for 500, I did forget to dunk the parchment paper in water. 

123 the III

This bread was so good, I thought it was worthy of creating my first blog!  The original recipe came from Rose Levy Berenbaum's site, here; she cites original recipe from Chef Andrew Meltzer.  The version she posts is a yeasted loaf and was spectacularly good.  I made it as she posted and below is the result.  The dough contains an oat porridge, toasted oats, and the loaves are rolled in oats before baking.  I was obviously a little more successful in rolling one

Week three and bread three. Last time, i felt the structure of the dough was lacking, so I did a few more stretch and folds before shaping. To facilitate fermentation, I also did some more folds early and slightly decreased the salt. In this i was certainly right, for the first time, the dough doubled in bulk overnight and proofed very well.

This was inspired by both Ian and Cedar Mountain. 

Recipe 

Makes 3 loaves of ~735 g cooked weight each

Add-ins

100 g black rice

50 g barley flakes

50 g hemp hearts

50 g honey

30 g yogurt

50 g water

Dough

100 g high extraction rye flour (115 rye berries, milled and sifted)

200 g high extraction Selkirk wheat flour (230 g Selkirk berries, milled and sifted)

700 g unbleached flour

700 g filtered water

22 g salt

250 g levain

I was six when the Larraburu Brothers Bakery shut down. I don't recall what the bread tasted like, and I'm not even sure I ever had any. But I'm fascinated by the history and how widespread and adored this bread was. The number of loaves, the loaves shipping around the world, even to France, indicates that it wasn't just a small group of aficionados that were keen on this bread.

I grew up on Colombo rolls and sliced bread, Oroweat rye, and 'artificial' sourdough baguettes from Safeway.  And I always had a Boudin bread bowl with clam chowder whenever I visited San Francisco.

Last time I made the Scott MeGee Ciabatta, but with a biga.  Today, I converted it to a 125% hydration AP levain.  Whereas the biga had 40% of the flour pre-fermented, I dropped this down to 20%, and also dropped the IDY by at least 2/3.  The overall hydration stays at 76%.

I kept the large bread at 750g but decided to not stretch it so far this time so it has more girth, which I like.  The taste is sweet and delicate and this ciabatta makes great morning toast.

A Sourdough Crossroads 

Don't think for minute because of the title that I am going to give up this wonderful hobby (using the word hobby seems a bit limited to me but it is what it is- another expression I have never liked). If I gave up baking sourdough I would have to go back to brewing beer, and there is nothing more messy and demanding that that. I once ruined a perfectly good carpet with an exploding mead recipe.