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When I went to the local sake distillery to get more Koji rice for my various fermentation projects using aspergillus oryzae I noticed that they also sold sake kasu. For those unfamiliar sake kasu are the lees remaining after sake production. The Japanese do not like to waste useable food products so sake kasu can be used to make many things. In fact, I used the sake kasu in this test bake to see if I could use it to build a levain to bake a loaf of bread. I think I had some success with this. I will need to adjust the recipe but to give you an idea of what I did I’ll share the outline.

36 hour fermentation of final dough. 250g AP flour, 150g Bread four, instant yeast .05%, 100% hydration Levain 15%, Salt 2%, cooked sticky rice grain 12.5%

3-30minute interval for bulk fermentation folding, 36hour refrigerated fermentation, 2.5hour proofing, 280C oven and used a Dutch oven

This went well. Taste is as I remember from Poland

Tried my first loaf with Flourless Sourdough Starter this weekend.  White flour loaf with 10% whole wheat (KAF), 10% sifted durum (Janie's Mill), and 5% barley flour.  12% cracked wheat was added as a soaker.

FLAS was prepared by putting 40g of Breiss red wheat malt and 10g of kamut berries in 25g of raisin yeast water and 475g of water.  This was kept at 87 deg F for 36 hours and was fed 1/4 tsp of sugar after 24 hours.  pH after 36 hours was 3.45.  It had a sour apple type aroma, but not like a rye starter sour apple.

I've been baking bread for a number of years now and experimenting with whole wheat and various other grains for about 2 years, mostly in a fairly haphazard, now and then manner.  After purchasing Tartine No. 3, I've been inspired to double down on experimentation with different grains, so it seems like a good time to also get a little more methodical about documenting loaves.

 I took the opportunity to use up some of the Italian  Rimcinta Macinata (fine ground wholemeal) and some Defiance bakers flour 50/50% along with the first of the oranges off of my tree using both the juice 10% and the peel 4% yeast @ 0.5% butter 3%  sugar 2% water 50%+ and poppy seed 2% and a handfull of sultannas to make things more interesting. Not a sweet dough and probably go nice on a cheese board with some dips. 

i did have a little play with the tops with a braid and a mini epi, OJ AND POPPY SEED LOAVES 

Growing up I remember eating whole wheat pita (commercially produced) to have veggie sandwich pockets. I figured it was time to give this a try and see if I could get a nice pocket bread myself. Following the instructions in Whole Grain Breads was not difficult and with the use of a stand mixer to do the actual gluten development I found this to be surprisingly easy. 

RECIPE AND CALCULATIONS HERE

Day 1 - Mix the soaker and biga and leave overnight. 

In all honesty this bread wasn't planned until the day before I started my bake. I was planning on something else and then I stumbled across this thread from our very own Benny! 

Red Miso Furikake (Sesame seeds and Nori) sourdough

With the kids out of the house and unable to bring baked goods to the office, I mostly stopped baking croissants. Husband has been wanting to eat some recently, and we never seem to catch the short hours of our favorite local bakery. So I made some yesterday and baked a few this morning (putting most of the batch in the freezer after shaping).