This bake followed my usual formula, except I increased the hydration slightly, adding an extra 20 g of water to the final dough. The formula and procedures can be found here: San Joaquin Sourdough: Update
Susan and I have just returned from two weeks in Italy. We spent a week in Venice, a couple days in Lucca and 4 days in Liguria. We broke up our return trip with an overnight stay in Milan. I am happy to report that the bread we had was much superior to that of our last visit to Amelia-Romagna and Tuscany three years ago.
The bread we were served in restaurants was almost always made wholly with white flour.
There is a traditional type of test question in medicine called “visual diagnosis.” The student is shown a photo - it might be of a whole person, a face or just a piece of skin with a rash - and asked to make a diagnosis. The last time I took a test like that was for board certification in Pediatrics. That was in 1977, and I can still remember most of the photos I was shown - a young girl with an inguinal hernia, a teenage boy’s feet (They were flat.), a rash (Scabies), a child with a rare genetic condition (Progeria). I think there were a couple more.
I usually make this bread as 500g boules, but the beautiful large bâtards and miches I've seen from Josh, Syd and others in the past week or so had me craving a larger loaf. So this 1kg bâtard was baked this afternoon, and it is good. I think it's kind of pretty, too.
Yesterday, I baked the "Finnish Rye" from the SFBI for the second time. It is a delicious bread, although what makes it Finnish and why it's called a rye, since it has less rye than either white or whole wheat flour, remains mysterious. I described how I made it in my previous post ("Finnish Rye" from the SFBI.
My wife and I have been taking Italian language lessons in a small group for about 2 years. Our teacher was born in Palermo and trained to be a teacher from 16 years old through University. She has lived in the US for about 15 years, and she misses Sicily a lot, including the bread.
I have made the Pane Valle Maggia (or "Pane Maggiore") 3 previous times. I have decided I actually liked the first version the best, so I made it again today. The procedure was substantially the same. See Pane Valle del Maggia.
In my opinion, the formula for 5-Grain Levain by itself fully justifies the price of Jeffrey Hamelman's Bread. This is just one of several formulas for multigrain breads in the book. I believe I have made all the levain-based ones, and I haven't found one that wasn't scrumptious. I think my very favorite is actually the one that uses a rye sour for leavening.
After the last bake of this bread, I wondered if I could get a more open crust by doing all the mixing by hand, rather than some by machine. So, that's what I did. The formula was the same as that used in Pane Valle Maggia, ver. 2 3/7/2014, except I did not take the time to grind fresh whole wheat flour. I used Giusto's Organic Fine Whole Wheat flour instead.
My procedure was as follows:
Pane Valle Maggia, ver. 2
March 7 , 2014
Last month, I made Pane Valle Maggia, inspired by Josh's “Pain Maggiore.” It was a very good bread, but I wanted to make it again using freshly milled whole wheat flour. Also, I thought it would be improved by pre-fermenting the rye component. So, I made both changes for today's bake. The Total Dough ingredients were basically unchanged.
