Blog posts

A relatively new TFL member recently asked how to make a sourdough bread. His description of the desired characteristics brought to mind a bread we made in the San Francisco Baking Institute Artisan II Workshop on sourdough baking. It was a decidedly French-style pain au levain with minimal acidic acid tanginess but a creamy, sweet complex flavor. It was the preferred bread of the SFBI faculty. The special features of this white bread were a liquid levain fed every 12 hours that made up about 30% of the total flour in the final dough.

I couldn't wait another day to order Tartine 3, and when I went to buy it, I found a "used like new" copy for under $12.  Must have been my day.  I made the first recipe using starter I had on hand, feeding twice daily preceding the bake, and used a young levain.  I'm not sure why the recipe calls for twice as much levain to be made as the recipe calls for.  Also, dutch ovens always burn the bottoms.

What's not to love ? I had to clean out the freezer since we are going away for a year. I found 2 boxes of roasted pumpkin that I had put up last Fall. Enter this bread. What an amazing dough to work with. The key is to drain the heck out of the pumpkin. The rest of the procedure was like working with silk. The rapidity of the rise is accounted for by the AYW. More and more it is giving me results that are really impressive as far as texture and rise time. 

240 gm levain ( 100% hydration mixed rye/white)

600g water and AYW - 300g each

700g bread flour

This weeks bake features sesame seeds. I hadn't tried them in a loaf yet so i decided to give it a go. I really wanted to try black sesame seeds (mainly because i think they would have looked really cool in the crumb) but i couldn't find them :( So i went ahead with regular white sesame seeds, because i like the taste :)

Formula:

Well after a solid week of rain and very heavy rain the last couple of days the sum has finally come out. Shown is pulla left and double chocolate expresso cookies on the right. I bake a loaf of pulla every week or two and my rolling out of the braids and braiding is slowly getting better.

To Giada's recipe which follows, I added 1/2 cup of chopped walnuts. Yummmmm!

Thank you guys, Sjadad and Ian!!  

Now I can say I've made pizza!!!

A savoury loaf with a cracking crust.  I will definitely make this one again.

Made the sponge the night before with my rye starter, straight from the fridge.

The original recipe did not contain enough liquid so I made the sponge with a 1/2 Cup water and the same for the final dough. Instead of using malt powder, I added a tablespoon of barley malt to the warm water and miso mix. I did not reduce the salt either. It is not too salty at all, just nice and savoury.

Many folks don’t know it but Nelson not only was a great man who brought freedom and liberty to his country but he was quite a bread guy too.  One of his most famous quotes was ‘Let there be work, bread, water and salt for all.’  But it didn’t stop there.   He lived on bread and water in prison for years and his favorite folk tale was ‘How Hlakanyana Outwitted the Monster which featured a stolen loaf of bread.

It's been a while, since May, that I posted here.  Off to the northern reaches of the Atlantic seaboard for family time in NY, and then further upstream to the Boston area where I joined Varda and Joan in a bread session at their Bread Obsession for a wonderful two weeks.  As soon as we arrived back home we had family visit here for a week, and now I'm finally catching up on day-to-day life.

We love Ian's take on this bread. So much so that I had to make it again this week as we were out and I had roasted a turkey breast and we needed something yummy for sandwiches. This bread is a delight to work with. I changed a couple things . My starter is always 100% hydration so I use less water in the final dough. I also " autolyse" using the levain with the flours and water since my levain is s major source of the water in the dough and without it there isn't any way to autolyse the flours. I subbed in 200g of AYW for part of the water.