Blog posts

At first it was clearly the levain which objected to being returned to the west coast after spending several months on the east coast.  Finally it decided it would make due with its new, but in reality old, surroundings.  Then it was clearly my hands which had totally lost their mojo after spending those same months generously feeding the levain but not demanding that it work for its living.  One bread after another was poorly shaped, poorly developed or overproofed, or poorly scored.

I'm home for spring break, which means I'm without my starter and my scale. I've been wanting to try the tangzhong method, and I found a recipe that used cups so I could make it at home (http://www.instructables.com/id/Asian-Sweet-Bread-Hong-Kong-Pai-Bao-Hokkaido-Mil/).

These are 76% hydration, 20% levain, 30% whole wheat, with a smidge of pate fermentee for that little added umph. 

No crumb shots, because they were gifts. 

Abe, thanks for inspiring me with your scoring pattern! The boule is exactly your pattern, with a few extra very shallow swirls

Here's to making it through Monday, TFL!

Deja vu.  This weekend I decided to make the Tartine Country rye bread again, this time I made four loaves.  The formula in the book:

Leaven  200g

Water    800 g

Whole Rye 170 g

Bread Flour 810 g

Salt 20g.

++

My "modifications" to the formula:

Leaven                      200 g.

All Purpose Flour     500 g

Whole White Wheat 330 g

Finally made a good pain de mie using white wheat flour 95% extraction and natural leaven.  Before there were always problems ranging from not enough dough to fill the pullman pan to taste that was too sour. Now the only thing to find out is if it can be repeated. 

Stu

I lied. I changed more than one thing and I made two batches again! But it worked out this time, or at least one batch did.

Made some changes from last week's attemp by retarding the dough for 15 hours and out in room temp for 1 hour. baked with steam for first 15 minutes and without for the remaining 25 minutes at 230.

think i got better oven spring compared to last week. But still on the quest for that elusive bloom!

For detail steps and pictures, please see http://maobaocun.blogspot.com/ 

It's been quite some time since I baked a pure levain from FWSY so yesterday I decided to make the Overnight Country Brown.  Right off the bat I had a couple of problems.  First, I use equal weights of white and whole wheat flours in my starter and keep it at 100% hydration while Forkish uses an 80% hydration starter.  This was not a huge obstacle since I'm pretty good at math so I could do a conversion.  My second problem was that I didn't have enough whole wheat flour to make the levain per Forkish's formula and still have enough to make the final dough,

I've been working with liquid sourdough starters for the last several years and have just started investigating stiff starters, something that you can store for longer term. Any thoughts would be appreciated.