Blog posts

This bake was Ken Forkish's double fed sweet levain and I kept to his schedule as much as I could. I had to refrigerate the first build for a few hours and the second build overnight, so the flavour profile will be somewhat different, but this formula sure makes a nice loaf of bread. Great shreddy crumb and a nice crust.

I really enjoy how the loaf blooms open organically by proffing seam side down and baking seam side up.

We had that great 3 day whole rye starter from last Friday’s pumpernickel bake.  We had thickened it up some to store in the fridge for this week’s bake and some for next week’s bake too.

Since it wasn’t 100% hydration we added extra water and since there was so much whole and sprouted grain we upped the hydration to 75% from the standard 71% of 1:2:3 recipes.  The levain weighted 130 g with 75G of whole rye in it at 75% hydration

I’d decided to bake a few rounds of David Snyder’s Sourdough Italian Bread just before the recent flurry started:
David’s: http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/42511/sourdough-italian-baguettes
EmmaFeng’s: http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/42526/sourdough-italian-bâtard-dmsnyder

http://www.sustainweb.org/realbread/national_real_breadmaker_week/

Yes, I'm still baking.

The following are examples of the things I do quite regularly (the title photo is an adaptation of Hamelman's Wholewheat with pecans and golden raisisns)

This is a "Paderborner", Rye sour Detmolder style with 20% wholewheat

This is so yummy, I just had a slice with just unsalted butter and OMG it is so tasty * if I say so myself *

The flavour is amazing,the sour with the sweetish yet earthyness of the walnuts... 

Recipe

200g mature 80% hydration wheat Sourdough Starter

400g bread flour

200g wholemeal flour

350g warm water

2 tbsp Sunflower oil

WOW! Boy was it EVER nice to bite into a naturally leavened loaf again!!!!! The crust, crumb, chew and flavour are so much better!

Very nice to have an active levain started! My YW  starter is sparkling along on day four, so I am back in business. Now that I have a nice active levain and ski season is done, I am getting into the rhythm of baking bread again and lovng it again!

I killed off both my sweet levain and YW starters after lengthy travel last fall. I thought it would be easy to replicate -- NOT. Two fails with both Deb Wink's pineapple juice solution and dabrownman's YW. I gave up and didn't bake another loaf all winter. Just cookies, buns and muffins.

Well I now have a most active, young levain. There are two things I did to ensure success this time. Okay three if you count the time that I have to tend to things these days.

We had a Game of Thrones party over the weekend, so I geeked out with a theme bread. Semolinas are fun to work with, and I figured anything yellow/gold in color could be called a Lannister bread of some sort. It was about half semolina flour. This was flavored with nutritional yeast powder, garlic powder, white truffle salt, and some chopped green olives from a jar. I also sprinkled in some smoked paprika during the stretch and folds hoping it would show up as red specks in the finished bread to evoke the crimson color the Lannisters like.

This was the weirdest pizza dough we have ever crafted.  We too some of our discard from the 3 day old rye starter and feed it some white flour and then a 1:2:3 SD mix with it for a planned pizza the next day.  Sadly, things got in the way after we punched this dough down after the bulk ferment and put it in the fridge.  It sat there for a full 72 hours before we got around to making pizza - which I do not not recommend - 24 hours is plenty for the retard.

Having heard so much about SFBI, I finally went there for a 5 days sourdough workshop.

Its located up a tiny mountain which offers stunning view to town