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Since folks have been sharing their simple whole wheat loaves, I thought I should share this. It's a very easy, straightforward bake and makes an absolutely delicious, moist and flavorful loaf of bread.  It's adapted from  Patrick Ryan https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3qDLrpQh10I corrected the salt and added a pseudo autolyse (with yeast but no salt.)The hydration is 73% and is really perfect.This recipe produces two 600 gram loaves.

• 700g wholemeal spelt flour
• 510ml water
• 35g black treacle (or honey, molasses, or barley malt syrup, which is what I used)
• 20g salt
• 7g dry yeast

2 x 400g (1lb) loaf tins or 20cm (8inch) proving baskets

1. Mix together the molasses/black treacle/barley malt syrup and the water.
2. Add the water mix to the spelt flour. Sprinkle the yeast over the water. Use a dough whisk to just combine. Let sit for 1 hour to hydrate the gluten and bran.
3. Spread the dough out on a counter and add the salt. Roll the dough up, fold it over, and knead for about three minutes, until the salt is mixed in. The gluten is already developed by the rest, so it doesn't need much kneading. The dough will be very springy, cohesive, and tacky, and will show windowpane after a brief rest.
4. Place the dough into a lightly oiled bowl, cover and let it rest for 20-30 mins at room temperature.
5. After 30 minutes turn the dough out onto a clean work surface and stretch the dough out like a sheet, and give it a letter fold. This helps to build strength within the dough. Fold the dough in thirds from one side and then the other, then roll it up from top to bottom. Return the dough to the bowl, seam side down. Cover and leave to rest for another 20-30 minutes.
6. Again, turn the dough out onto a clean work surface then stretch the dough out and give it another letter fold. Return to the bowl and for a further 60 minutes until fully proofed.
7. Turn out the dough on to a clean kitchen surface and do a gentle letter fold to knock back. Don't stretch it as much as before: allow it to keep some thickness and air. Pop any large bubbles. Divide the dough into two then shape each piece of dough into a rough round shape.
8. If making a round loaf, tighten the round. (You can watch how to shape the dough in the video). Place the shaped dough upside down into a floured proving basket, seam side facing up, or alternatively in a bowl lined with a lightly floured tea towel
9. Alternatively, the dough can be shaped and placed into a bread tin. (You can watch how to shape the dough in the video). Once the dough has been shaped, place it in a buttered floured loaf tin.
10. Leave the dough to prove at room temperature for about 50 minutes. While it's proving, pre-heat the oven to 230°C/425°F and get your steaming setup ready, if desired.  Turn the dough out of the basket onto a baking tray and score the top of the loaf with a sharp knife or baker’s razor blade. Or if using a bread tin, dust the surface of the dough with some wholemeal spelt flour before placing into the oven.
11. Place the loaves in the oven. Bake for 35 to 40 minutes or until a good crust has formed and the loaves sound hollow when tapped on the base.

Here's a picture of the dough after the first letter fold. 

I managed to bottle 30 bottles of Australian Ale just the other day from my home brew and also kept the dregs from the bottom of the fermenter. I decided to use some of that today to raise my dough, often referred to as a Beer Barm. I quickly worked out a dough formula and was going to make a 1KG dough but then decided that a single 750g loaf would be the go. i shook the bottle up that contained the Barm and weighed off an equal amount of flour and barm combined the two and set aside, i marked the container so that we could see its progress and its time frame. In just over two hours it was crowning and set to be used. i weighed up the rest of the ingredients and made the dough which was finished at 7.00 not sure how long the bulk fermentation will take shall have to play it by ear. More to follow tomorrow as i am off to bed

Flour 420g : Salt 9g : Malt extract 9g : Butter 9g : Beer Barm 104g : Water 233g.

After heading for bed and placing the dough into the fridge at 9.00 last night i retrieved it at 5 this morning and at 7.00 it was knocked back given recovery time and shaped at 7.30. The shape is a new one that i haven't done before and quite pleased with the result. you roll out 6 strands of dough lay 3 down in the horizontal plane and three in the vertical plane over lapping alternatively in the middle, from there you proceed to plait three strands together away from the centre which produces a star effect, you then roll these arms under the loaf to make a ball. Voila! Cutting and tasting still to come, and if the taste testing proves to be ok and anyone wants to try using the Australian Ale Barm i'd be happy to make some available to you to try ( Perth Western Australia). Mean while i have some of the ferment that i fed on with more w/m that looks like it needs to be used or fed again pretty much like you do with a sour dough, except that it's not a sourdough its just propagation of the yeasts that were used in the brewing process Saccharomyces cerevisiae

FOOTNOTE With many people suffering shortages of yeast this may be the way to go!

And the taste was very good too, I will be trying it again with extra feed of flour thrown in to the equation.

Yes. It's cheese bread again. You can't have too much of it, can you? :)

Taleggio Hazelnut SD with Einkorn, Red Fife & Sprouted Red Rice

Blue Stilton Sultanas Rosemary SD with Einkorn & Sprouted Kamut 

 
(* For the instruction below, the numbers before and after the slash (/) are for the 1^st formula and the 2^nd formula respectively) 

Sift out the bran from dough flour, reserve 37/39 g for the leaven. Soak the rest, if any, in equal amount of water taken from dough ingredients. 

Combine all leaven ingredients and let sit until ready, about 4/6 hours (25/24.5°C).

Roughly combine all dough ingredients except for the add-ins. Ferment for a total of 3/2.5 hours. Mix on low for 2 minutes at the 20 and 40 minute mark. Fold in the add-ins by a set of lamination at the 50 minute mark. After the bulk fermentation, shape the dough then put in into a banneton directly. Retard for 10/8 hours.

Preheat the oven at 250°C/482°F. Score and spritz the dough. Remove the dough from the fridge and bake straight at 250°C/482°F with steam for 20 minutes then without steam for 25 minutes more or until the internal temperature reaches a minimum of 208°F. Let it cool for a minimum of 2 hours before slicing.

Both loaves carry a pungent aroma thanks to the strong cheese used. The sweet, coconut-ey einkorn mellows the flavour a bit so that it wouldn’t be overwhelming. I particularly like the burst of sweetness the sultanas provide. It does a nice job balancing the spiciness of Blue Stilton.

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Smoked salmon biryani

Pressure-cooked lamb shank bao bun

Thai-inspired salad with roasted beef & pan-fried homemade mochi

Pan-grilled duck breast skewers with roasted herby potatoes

Japchae

Pressure-cooked tomato braised beef tongue with onion-ey mash

Pan-fried garlic chive lamb dumplings

keeping busy, kinda.  My wife wanted something with fruit and nuts for a next bake.

Forkish FWSY Field Blend #2, alfanso style.  This one uses a 100% hydration all AP levain and toned down to 75% overall hydration.  First time adding anything to this wonderful bread, but the match seemed made to order.

If you've worked with add-ins like fruit or nuts and made a shape like baguettes, you probably have come across a similar obstacle.  The relatively thin diameter of the dough often allows the additional product to dictate its shape somewhere along the length.  Hence one of these has a slender waistline.  Also scoring can be hit or miss with with so much interruption of a clean score due to the "bumpy" parts.  It's their being in the way of the score line as well as their weight and interruption of the contiguous gluten structure that may affect the eventual grigne. 

3 x 415g baguettes/long batards.

Last week it was another Hamelman WW levain, but covered in bran flakes and shaped as one girthy beast.  The near end was lopped off before I snapped the photo.

1250g x 1 batard.

Don't get too excited - the spelt is only 20% of the flour - but it makes for a nice loaf!

It's ages since I've posted details of one of my bakes on TFL. TFL is full of baking questions at the moment, so I thought a few details and pictures of my weekend spelt bake might give a bit of content variation.

It was a pretty simple bake (for me!) with 20% mockmilled spelt, 3% rye from the levain and a hydration of 74%. It includes 1% of my current favourite ingredient, fava bean flour.

I'm running a trial with my starter at the moment, keeping it on the counter and feeding it once a day, rather than keeping it in the fridge. The plan is to see if it has more "vitality" managing it this way.

Flour mix

    200g Mockmilled spelt
    780g bread flour
    10g diastatic malt flour
    10g fava bean flour


Levain

    Build 1 at e7 day0: 5/25BF-5rye/24water 27C
    Build 2 at m8 day1: 55/80-30/88 29C

 
Other

    True hydration 74%
    Salt 1.8%

Process  

    m11 day1: Spelt flour autolysed with 160g RT water + 2g salt
    e1 day1: 532g water in mixer, add dry flours and spelt mixture.  Autolyse 15min
    Add 225g levain, mix in
    3min low speed
    add 18g salt and mix 2min low speed
    Mix on high speed 1min 30secs
    Drip in 40g bassinage water on low speed, total time 4min
    Turn out of the mixer into proofing bowl, dough temp 25C
    Bulk ferment at 25C for 4hrs 15mins with a couple of coil folds. Volume increase about 55%
    Preshape to 2 x 850g batards. BR 20mins
    Shape, proof on counter for 20mins
    Retard in fridge overnight
    Score and bake as normal with steam

Thoughts

    Good ears and nice blisters.
    Pretty open crumb
    Mild flavour - I'd like to get a bit more lactic tang in - maybe by reducing levain quantity and fermenting longer?

Photos

Lance
   
   

I have read about why the flour is different, but now need to know how to adjust the recipe in a bread maker. Given there is less protein and/or less gluten in U.S. flour, is there an easy way to compensate for this by adding more or less water? Alternatively, should I buy protein or gluten powder and add some? How much?

I've tasted so many breads and pastries with peanuts but they're all sweet. Peanuts are wonderful savory too so I decided to make a savory peanut bread. Braised peanuts are our favorite which is not so common in where we live. Using the fresh peanuts that my mom bought before quarantine, I made these squares (well, they are not so square-shaped but I will stick with the name. :P) to pass time and have something delicious to eat. These are inspired by the guo kui and other Chinese breads.


Five spice braised peanuts. So good! You can snack on them on their own or eat them with rice.

 Fried garlic makes almost everything better. 

Braised Peanuts on dough with a bit of fried garlic and freshly snipped chives.

Basic dough with a bit of sugar and oil though lard would certainly be a welcome addition here. Rolled flat, sprinkled with all things delicious rolled into a cylinder then cut into squares. No proofing, pan fried for 3 minutes on each side then baked at 180C for 20 minutes. Crispy on the outside; stretchy, soft and chewy on the inside with that great peanut flavor and fragrant from the garlic and chives.

 
When I posted my homemade sausages months ago, I said that my first venture into meat preservation are Chinese ones and I save them for a more fitting post. Here is this post.

Sweet Chinese Sausage - made with ground meat and soy sauce. Different from the more commonly seen pinkish Chinese sausages which I think does not use soy sauce. It also differs in taste a bit but the quality is much better.

  
Steamed and ready to be eaten.

Chinese Liver Sausage - Made the traditional way with sliced meat and liver. I did not find any resource for this type of sausage, it seems it is not as common as the meat sausages. I don't if this will be a success since liver is different from meat, it much softer and more delicate with a higher water and blood content. I think it was a success! Sweet with a good meaty flavor but with that slightly gamy bitter bite from the liver. The sliced meat and liver offer contrasting textures which is really better compared to the sausage made with ground meat.

 Salted Chicken Leg - Traditionally will be duck but I can't find duck legs where I live so I substituted chicken legs. Very good! Tastes very different from fresh chicken, not very salty and deeply savory. I deboned one to see if it makes a difference and yes it did, the deboned was chewier and tougher. Best to cook it with rice and with sweet sausages. The salty chicken and sweet sausage complements each other really well.

Chinese Bacon - Air-dried pork belly with spices. Our favorite. My parents always requests that I make these so we have a steady supply.






Cooked with rice so the rice absorbs all the flavorful fat.


Hanging outside just like in the countryside. 

I took my Take 2 of Cedar Mountain’s Khorasan Oat Sourdough and subbed out the khorasan for Spelt. 

Here is the recipe I followed with these exceptions:

1. Used Spelt instead of Khorasan. 

2. Did not use the additional water in the dough as the Spelt flour didn’t seem to absorb as much water. 
3. Inversely, the Spelt porridge needed much more water to cook and soften. I didn’t measure how much more water I added as I just splashed more in as the porridge ran dry, but still wasn’t done. Both the oat and spelt porridge’s were quite stiff when I used them. 
4. The Spelt proofed quite quickly in the fridge and I ended up baking at 3 am. So the loaves were cold proofed for only 8 hours. 
5. And last but not least, I only made one batch of dough since I was baking just for us. It felt very odd to make just 3 loaves. 

I've been baking sourdoughs for many years but I am admittedly imprecise and quite neglectful. It usually turns out "good enough" but rarely are my loaves great.

These ones were.

IMG_20200329_173719_787.jpg

I mixed up AP flour and water at about 68% hydration, then added my ripe starter (which I have no idea what the hydration is). I ran the mixer a bit longer than usual and gave the dough a longer than average rise on the counter, approximately 6 hours. I shaped two rounds and rather than putting them in bannetons, let them rise on parchment and wrapped them with tea towels to prevent them from spreading. 

IMG_20200329_181218.jpg

The one other thing I did differently was bake them directly on my baking stones with inverted enamel pots over them for the first 25 minutes. That gave me both the benefit of a hot stone and allowed them to steam themselves. The crust was probably the thinnest and crackliest I've ever made at home.

Definitely one I will try to reproduce again soon!

Hi all, I have not been posting for a while..as a bit busy on a total new adventure and some may remember when I started baking here and baked the Champlain loaf with Dan on a community bake again and again....

I have now a little bake room at our house No. 44 and just started baking for a market as well as smaller subscriptions as I handmix only...

Just wanted to share a few random photos and I bake mainly with a new 'second hand' B40 Rofco but also still have my smaller B20 Rofco. No mixer but  a commercial fridge to finally not overproof in fridge anymore!!! Hah!  I made some shaping tables using Ikea trestles and wooden work tops.. everything is on wheels thanks to my husband making me trolleys which helps a lot...

Very early days and learning lots....biggest batch was 30 loaves for one market and happy with that...

This post is really a big thank you to the many of you here who have helped me to learn and it never stops...

Stay safe all of you...Kat