Blog posts

I've been spending my recent last few months' bakes frequently feasting on a small handful of Mr. Hamelman's formulae.   In general they seem to center around a 125% hydration bread flour based levain, or are modified from IDY to levain, as  my recent take on his potato bread was.  As often as not, I'll use rye instead of bread four.  

I made this bread last weekend after my return from my business trip to Germany.  I wanted to try changing up my method for mixing the porridge bread a bit to see if I could get a better result.  Since I'm home today enjoying the blizzard that's hitting the east coast I finally had some time to post.

For this bake I added some toasted almond flour and fresh corn to rolled oats and barley flakes for the porridge.  I used a mixture of several whole grain flours which were all freshly milled.

We just returned from a week and a half on Maui. It was a long-deferred first visit to that island, and I hope we visit again soon.

We ate well. Hawaii is the home of "Asian Fusion" cuisine, and we ate a lot of it. The fish was simply fabulous - so much better than the very freshest fish I can get where I live. Because we found a fish market with wonderful fish, right off their own boat, I did cook in our rented condo a couple times.

This is take 2 on making Injera. Unfortunately, I have never had it before so I am operating in a vacuum when it comes to texture and flavour. I read it is supposed to be spongy and have a sour flavour. 

Yesterday, I followed a recipe that used commercial yeast as well as baking powder and vinegar among other ingredients.  So today when I  was reading up on how it is made traditionally by fermenting teff flour, I thought why not use my sourdough starter?

I've finally (finally!) managed to make a rye sour starter that is active and able to rise bread. I don't know why this has been so difficult for me, but I've had a few disappointments when trying to make 100% rye bread. I make a pretty decent deli rye, but the three-stage starter alternates between wheat and rye flour and starts with my very active wheat starter, so that didn't count. I have a customer who had requested bread that was 100% naturally leavened and had no wheat (Kamut, spelt, etc.) in it, so was challenged to come up with something good.

This was my attempt at baguettes and barms .  I used the basic white loaf with a poolish from fwsy. I know the baguettes don't look great, but I'm quite proud of them. I really need to get better at scoring my loaves. Other than that I love my new hobby.

This bread is inspired from several sources: my bread baking class, Joc1954 Cranberry Tarragon bread and a request to make a Cranberry Wild Rice loaf from one of the volunteers at the soup kitchen. 

And the very special thing about this bread is that it was leavened using JamieOF's sourdough starter. He (guessing he is a he, if not, I apologize!) sent me some of his explosive starter which he had dried. This was new to him and reviving it was new to me.

I've been keeping a low profile recently doing the same old, same old things.  Mostly minding my own business and occasionally commenting on baguettes and not much more.  Needed a break.  But my wife recently piped up and asked if I would make a potato bread.  There's a first time for everything, I suppose.  

Steady improvement with my Pain Complet, 70% true, total grain, home milled flour, 30% white flour. Not quite as much rise or as pronounced ears as one previous loaf, but best crumb yet, and actually a far better crust in terms of brittle and shattering texture and a range of dark toasty flavors. I'm handling these less and less, aiming for about 30 seconds of touching the dough over the whole process.