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The basic ingredients for good bread - flour, salt, water, yeast - are simple yet can produce such a wonderful variety of breads with complex flavours, crumb textures, crusts.  Sometimes in my tinkering and experimenting I need to remind myself that bread made just with these basic ingredients can be really good bread!  So with that in mind, today's bake focused on the basics - good grain, salt, water and yeast. 

Cracked Grain Porridge Sourdough Bread

After a few not-so-successful bake, I decided to cheer myself up with a loaf of golden sourdough bread. To be exact, it’s quintuple (aka five times) positive energy sourdough. So how does it add up to five? I’ll count it for you.

Cornmeal          

Masa harina      

Turmeric  

Golden tea leaves

Toasted white sesame seeds  

See? I didn’t lie to you!

Hello, I'm new here but I love the fact that we could share our passion around baking!

I've baked this loaf with the formula from the book called Sourdough. I followed all the instructions and I think it's very good (as this is one of my first experiments). 

The flavors are amazing due to the toasted oats that bring sweetness and complexity, the crumb is airy but at the same time very moist, and I think this bread is perfect both for lunch and breakfast!

Loved this one that Danni had posted  http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/56209/european-peasant-loaf-take-2

So this was the third loaf that I made this week.  I scaled Danni's formula down as I only wanted to make one loaf.

Monday: refreshed starter and then built 100% levain and left to ripen.  8 pm built the final levain for dough using all bran I had sifted out plus some flour to give me enough flour and left at room temperature overnight

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Well I have never used Kamut and managed to find a 400 g packet at a local organic store - it was very pricey!

I milled the kamut and very quickly found it was different to rye spelt or wholewheat and it jammed my mill very quickly.  Panic!! hubby managed to free it up and after I removed the berry causing the issue, I carefully carried on, only to do it again.  This time I could fix it, but proceed very carefully and slowly feeding it through.   I made 2 x 350 gram boules so it is not a big bake.  I have learnt a few things for the next bake.

Abe posted this bread, it looked great, and because hubby is Swiss I just had to have a go.  I used my existing Raspberry yeast water instead of building a new raisin yest water as in the recipe.

Yep...I am still  learning to bake this formula trying different stiff or wet starters and also have been a bit more

scientific in measuring the amount of rise....so on this one I really 'focused' and only let it go to 30% with that domed look as well as bubbles and activity....and then straight in to the fridge for 12 hours at 5 - 3 C....

I love to get a 'balanced' looking loaf at the moment with good oven rise, crumb, crust and ears....(but boy would I love a 'big' ear!!!

It started with an Einkorn Poolish.  What was I thinking?   Should drink my morning coffee first before doing this.  Desperate to try out my new crown cane banneton, threw the last of my Einkorn flour onto the scale, 138 grams.  Matched that with equal weights of water. Whoops! A tad too much, no biggie, Einkorn loves to soak up water if given the time and gee whiz, only 10 extra grams.  Then found a 7 g package of instant yeast, tore open and tapped in a gram or two saving the rest for later.

A fond adieu to Portugal with this light semolina loaf, pao Alentejo, from Nelson Carvalheiro's recipe. It starts off with two different starters, one made with bread flour and one with rye. Left them overnight to bubble and mixed the bread the next morning. I got busy in the garden, so it overproofed a bit. I gently knocked it down and shaped the loaf according to Berndt's method and let it rise in a bowl lined with well-floured cheesecloth.