Blog posts

Panettone season is starting up again --- exciting, huh? I know some people bake it year-round, but I think my last one this year was last January and one colomba in the spring. It's a multi-day project, so for me, I need to be able to shoehorn it into my schedule and this year it didn't happen. But this week that finally changed and I tried something new that worked so well I thought I should share.

Today's bake: Pumpkinseed Rye   Kurbiskernbrot (Germany)

Source: The Rye Baker by Stanley Ginsberg

Notes: Increased dough to make 3 loaves @ 721gr each.

Substitutions: None

I’ve seen these Dutch Babies before but never had one let alone made one.  Most of the ones I have seen are sweet, I decided to make this savory one for us tonight for dinner.  It was quite easy and delicious.  It is sort of like a pancake but made more like a Yorkshire pudding in a way.

Every now and then I go after open lacy crumb in my breads. Now, I'll be first to admit that I love my bagels, flat-breads, whole-wheat and all rye breads too! So, a lot of the time I'm not interested in open crumb at all. But, the first time I made a sourdough bread that had a dark, almost-burnt crust, and a light interior that was like a "web of crumb" held up by the crust, it was a bit of an "aha" moment. So, that's what other bakers were going on about, it isn't only an Instagram thing!

Not a misprint, but I thought why not use two bigas? One yeasted for loft, one SD for flavour. Both in the same tub, to save space and washing up. So that's how it went!

 Both bigas made in the kenwood with K beater. I refreshed my SD starter prior to use at 100% to make mxing it into the biga easier.

Overall dough hydration was 69%.

I'm beginning to wonder whether I bake better when the weather is cool.  This is the second bake in a row to turn out very well.

The bread is based on a rye levain that matures overnight.  It also has a hot soaker that consists of cracked rye, flax seeds, sunflower seeds, oats, and all of the salt for the formula.  For this bake, I subbed bulgur wheat for the cracked rye since I have more on hand than I can easily use up other ways.  The soaker is allowed to rest overnight. 

It might seem somewhat incredulous that there would be yet another bachelor party bake within two weeks of the previous one, but yes - seems many men in our circle are getting married. 

This was a somewhat small party of 5 men, so I produced but 2 durum semolina matera-type loaves and 2 five-grain five seed/nut loaves. These went down very well, with the semolinas being the clear preference.

I've had more than my fair share of experimental failures lately! This is the curse of being an experimental baker. My failures of late have included, amongst others and going through my baking notes, a 90% biga with raisin yeast water that took too long to rise, a sourdough made with a cool and stiff preferment, and a sourdough made at warm temperatures with a very very low inoculation. Some bakes have had whacky hydrations too...

This was hectic. Baked 12 loaves (2 of each type) and 3.5kg of granola for the bachelor's party that the husband was organizing. Prepped the levains all in the morning before I left for work (cycled to the train station in record time), and started mixing dough the moment I was home at 8 pm. Was done baking 10 loaves at 3:30 am, and then had to bake the oat loaves at 8 am as they need a much longer rise.

Oct

I adapted this from my porridge bread formula but used a small % of starter and soaked the grains overnight instead of cooking them as a porridge. I used fresh milled and sifted Butler’s Gold WW and Danko Rye with some KAF bread flour.

The Harvest Grain mix from KAF consists of Whole Oat Groats, Rye Flakes, Wheat Flakes, Sunflower Seeds, Sesame Seeds, Flaxseed, Poppy Seeds, and Hulled Millet.