Hi there, after lurking and reading for a couple of months without being registered, I decided it was time to join in and share my stories with other bread freaks. To be honest nobody in my direct group of friends or family can't get exited when I talk about gluten strength, hydration or crumb. They all do love to eat the bread though...
In November last year I decided to build myself a sourdough starter and then it took of. I have not had the starter in the fridge yet and therefore have been doing lots of baking. I started with simple loaves and that went well then I took some to work to give to colleagues. Then started selling them to colleagues. As I work on a holiday resort in New Zealand, it was a busy time over the last month and the owners allowed me to walk around with some of my bread and try to sell it. I did and over the last month baked over 300 loaves and got known as the bread man. I did 100% wholegrain with rolled oats, 60% hydrated white loaf, 50/50 wholegrain and white and a raisin-bread.
I learned so much over the last month on maintaining a starter, my oven, scoring, steaming, proving etc. I do love it and have the feeling that I just started on my journey in to bread-land. So much more to explore... Seeds, rye, spelt, grains, sprouted grains... I learned a lot on this website and am grateful for people sharing their stories.
The last week I have been experimenting with higher hydration. I upped my 60% white to 80% this week and enjoyed it. Yesterday I realized I still had some stewed raspberry in the freezer from last year. At the moment in New Zealand the raspberries are getting ready so I decided it is time to use it up... And why not try to make a sweet white loaf. So I did and made a raspberry swirl white loaf.
As I don't want to turn my oven on for less then 4 loaves, here the recipe for 4 loaves:
*250g active starter (I use a 100% hydration fed with AP flour)
*1750g High grade flour (In NZ it is called high-grade which in my understanding is bread flour)
*1500g water
*37g salt
*63g sugar
*approximately 2 cups stewed raspberry( I didn't weigh the raspberry, which I should have...)
I mixed all the ingredients with a wooden in a bowl until the flour was dissolved then covered it with a wet tea-towel and let it stand for 30 min. Folded the dough for 3 minutes with a wooden spoon and covered it again. Repeated that 3 times. Then as it was so runny, weighed of 1/8 of the dough and put it in a oiled loaf tin. Spooned around half a cup of stewed raspberries on top and covered that with another 1/8 of the dough.
Covered the tins with a wet tea-towel and set to rise on the bench overnight.(appr. 8h) This morning I had to peel the tea-towel of the dough and fold it back on the tin. Tried scoring it but to wet... Put it in a preheated oven 240C with a tray on the bottom with water in it . Turned it to 200C after 10 min and took the tray with water out. Then let it bake for another 35min at 200c.
Happy with the holes in the crumb and crispy crust. But raspberries have pips in them the got stuck between our teeth, also the raspberry taste wasn't all there. Maybe I'll try strawberries next... My 2 year old son and 9 months old daughter loved it. He called it cake, not bread;)
After about a year of my last post, I thought I share this one. I have been baking lots of bread past year. Average of 25 loaves a week. Trying to start up my own business from home. As a stay at home dad with 2 kids 
I was happily surprised by the crumb. I used caraway seeds in the dough to flavor it. As one of my favorite Estonian loaves has a lovely taste, that I thought was caraway. After tasting the bread I had to admit it was nice but it missed a couple of flavors. In my opinion it wasn't tangy enough and some flavors I couldn't describe. So my next batch was gonna have a pre-ferment. And in the hope I would find a flavor I liked I added toasted sunflower seeds, a althus of the first batch, a bit of honey and molasses. that one turned out like this:
Well, verdict is the sunflower seeds are a nice addition to the bread. Not sure about the honey it was a bit more tangy due to the pre-ferment. I could have it more tangy, but my wife liked it like this. Still am in search of the other flavors. So batch three, which we had this morning had a bit more molasses, no honey and I added some fennel and coriander seeds to my caraway. This made a lot more liquorice tasting...so next time less fennel seeds... picture of the loaf is the one on top.
