Blog posts

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.

 and I learnt a huge amount today. Decided to make 100% hydration Bread recipe as posted by TigerX on 3rd March. I must admit I nearly didn't carry on when I twigged that it is a 100% hydration starter and dough! Without method to follow I set out to make this bread doing what I thought would work.

Well 3 years on, I decided to do this again and it really shows ...

How much I have learnt about bread, flour and yeast...and myself.

The only thing is now, is my oven is complete crap!!

But i work round it...less top shots:) 

No matter what I do, it burns....tinfoil, lower temp etc....But a new oven will be purchased shortly...

In the mean time....

Enjoy, Enjoy, Enjoy.

Thanks to a lot of wonderful feedback, I've made some modifications to suit my space better and to contribute to improved bread making.

1. Trying a stone dutch oven to explore the difference in the baking process using stone.  In just two bakes it is very clear how dramatic a difference the stone makes. 

When you make baguettes once or twice a year, they can only be considered a way to practice shaping and slashing or as Lucy calls them – Practice Slash Bags.   This version also has 20%  5 whole sprouted grains in the mix consisting of: wheat, emmer, spelt, rye and Kamut in keeping with Lucy’s love of all things sprouted and multigrain when it comes to bread.

I've been lurking here for a bit and finally decided to join.  I bake for fun and I've recently made a foray back into the kitchen.  Being semi-retired I do have a bit more time on my hands.  Add to that Knitting Club's attendance at a bread baking class and Viola....another hobby!

We started with a sourdough loaf and Challah both of which came out fantastic.  Half of the sourdough still resides in the freezer for later enjoyment...the Challah is gone....the last few slices dipped in egg, fried and smothered in Ron Wenzel's famous maple syrup...yum!

Hello, bakers! There was no school today because of snow, so I thought I would post about some of my more recent baking endeavors. Here they are:

3-Stage 90% Sourdough Rye

Sorry for the lack of a crumb shot; I'll try to explain the crumb as best I can. It was pretty dense, probably because I underproofed a little, but not too bad. Still getting used to rye, I guess. The flavor was excellent; earthy, smooth, tangy, sweet, and something else I cant quite say. 

The past few weeks I’ve had a chance for some good weekend baking, and below are the latest results.

So not such a success yesterday.

I'll keep it short(ish:) but I figured even though it didn't go well I'd post so hopefully others on the baguette path might avoid the same mistakes.

Mistake #1 - I ran two batches at once (dmsnyder's SJSD and txfarmer's practice baguettes), and inadvertently had them both wanting to go into the oven at the same time. The SJSD were seriously overproofed by the time they got into the oven.