Blog posts

I repeated last week’s bake of 36+hour Baguettes, overall hydration at 74% this time. The shaping went much better and although I thought the scoring was easier the cuts didn’t open up as well as I hoped.

Type 70 flour, proofed en couch and transferred to the stone by flipboard. 4 Demi-baguettes, 15” long, 250 grams dough weight each. Baked with hot water on lava rocks for steam in the first half of the bake. It’s a good challenge and there’s always a reason to do it again! I need to shuffle the loaves around on the stone next time to get the sides to brown more evenly 

Last night I made six loaves of Tartine. Four, using the basic formula, I bake last night after a three hour rise. Two of them I added rosemary and sautéed shallots. 

Two of them I started a little later and refrigerate overnight for a morning bake. Those two had 20% gray flour, 10% whole wheat, and 70% bread flour.

This is the 3 hour bake without gray flour 

This is the overnight gray flour bake

       Following on the path of my West Coast baking friends DA and Lucy, I was inspired to make a mostly white bread with a few twists.  I had not used Kamut for a while, so in went some fresh milled and sifted once with a #40 sieve into the mix along with a high percent of pecans and a healthy dose of buttermilk.

I really tested my knowledge and experience the other day. I had a bit of firm biga left from something else I was making and I hate wasting stuff, so I decided to make it into a loaf of bread. I did not measure anything for this, at all, so can't give you the recipe, but here's what I did:

… with good results, I decided to adapt the recipe for a 750g loaf, plus a bit. 

Starting off with 120g 100% hydration rye starter (base NMNF), I built a loaf comprising a mix of 33% rye, 20% each of whole wheat, AP and HG flours, 10% spelt, 1.75% caraway seeds, 1% VWG, 2% malt powder, with a reduction in water resulting in 73% overall hydration. 

I decided to offer the formula of my last bake another chance as the bread tasted too good to abandon. To solve the spreading issue, the hydration is dropped from 88% to 83%. This produced a much more manageable dough. In the hope of preserving the fragile gluten, I also added a 15 minutes autolyse and reduced the round of stretch and fold from two to one only. 

This time it wasn’t just Kamut but 6 different grains that added up to 10% of the grains in this bread but there were other differences ….nearly too many to mention.   Well not too many.  The 6 grains were rye, spelt, oat, red and white wheat plus Kamut.

THis is my recipe for this loaf:

100g bread flour leaven 100% hydration

400g bread flour and 280g water autolyzed for 8 hours

Added mixture of 40g WW, 30g Dark Rye, 30g Spelt , 60g water, 1T dry malt

Multigrain mixture and leaven added to autolyzed mixture

4.5hr bulk fermentation folding 2x 30m and 45m every hour

3.5hr proofing 28C rm temp

BAked 250C in dutch oven 25m and without top 220C for 25m

Before you turn away, please allow me explain why I’m posting this poor-looking bread. There’s no doubt that it had poor rise, yet it’s also true that its flavour is so exceptional it deserves to be shared.

Hi bakers,

few days ago I posted a khorasan loaf and I wasn't totally happy because of the lack of spring!

Today I tried again with the exact same recipe and I am proud to say that I now have a ear :)

The spring isn't the biggest but, since khorasan is not a very strong flour (as some of you pointed out), I am happy with it.

The crumb is good and I think that the aromas and flavors of khorasan can compensate this lack of spring, I'. in love with its chamomile taste and smell and with its mildly yellow color.