Blog posts

I was in a big-box food-service warehouse, and picked up a big bag of Grain Craft Power Flour ($11/25 lb). It is a commercial pizza flour, and I was aiming to increase the amount of whole grain flour/meal in my PdC without compromising volume. Another option would have been to add vital wheat gluten, but the pizza flour is easier, and we sometimes like commercial style pizza and bagels.

The purpose of this post is to reinforce that folks shouldn't just assume one levain will act like all, or even any other differing hydration or composition levain.

Yes, I know it is supposed to be a 5 grain levain but I wanted to add a variety of grains and seeds, and since we are pretty flexible with the rules, I used 8 grains (counting flax and oats as grains) and 2 types of seeds. I also adjusted the hydration upwards to be able to mix the flour, water, Levain part of the dough and then add the seed soaker at the end of the mixing time in a KitchenAid mixer. I also always make a bit more levain due to  loss from being stuck to the walls of the container so that’s why I am starting with 70 g rather than 45.

I had some leftover 125% Levain from Hamelman’s 5 Grain Levain (or 8 grain in my case) and I didn’t want to throw it out. I figured out a quick 1-2-3 recipe but the amount came out to be too much for my batard banneton. 

So what to do? I could use my bigger round bannetons but that means that I have to dig out my larger cast iron pots to bake the loaves and just didn’t feel like doing that. So I thought that I’ll use a loaf pan. 

I have very little experience working with white flour. There’re two reasons why I used so much white flour in this bake. The first is to stay true to the community bake’s formula. The second is to suit the palate of most people as I’ll give this loaf away to my aunts.

25% Spelt Multi-Seeds Sourdough

recipe by Emmanuel Hadjiandreou's book.  Inspired by Abe & Carole I had a go at this yesterday whilst making my 5 grain levain for the community bake.

Starter was refreshed the day before and in the evening I built the levain - 100% hydration with some bran included and left it overnight on the bench. 

Bake day was crazy - visitors in and out and bread on the go.

Hello- My sourdough starter (KA unbleached white bread flour and water 100% hydration) is now about 3 weeks old.  It rises very well after every feeding, at least double sometimes more, but my bubbles are not real big, there are a lot of them but they are fairly small. Is that ok?  I keep the starter on the counter at room temp which fluctuates between 65-71 F

I have not baked with it yet, but plan too soon. 

I began browsing the fresh loaf mid 2009, when I was trying to learn how to bake proper bread. Over the years the suggestions, advice, support and references have taught me much about baking bread. I enjoy the breads I bake.

Perhaps the best early advice I adopted was from a poster who suggested that if you can buy your flour from your local artisan baker do so. I have done so ever since, in Canmore and now in Golden where I just bought my second bag of bread flour from our local bakery.

I have been dipping my toes into breads with added goodies recently. My favorite part of bread with goodies is biting into a slice and getting a little surprise of olives/raisins/nuts/ etc. I think it adds a nice textural variance to the bread. I haven't made a loaf with olives yet, so when I found this recipe in Hammelman's Bread and had to give it a try. The loaves are about 65% hydration, 20% olives, 10% whole wheat, and naturally leavened. I ended up making a fougasse and a batard. Please excuse the large chunk of fougasse missing here. I couldn't resist. :)