trailrunner's blog

I haven’t made these in ages. It was time today. These are 50% home milled rye all of which was in the levain. 

I doubled the formula to get 16 / 100g bagels. I always use lye , absolutely no outrageous precautions needed except a towel to keep them from sticking to parchment/ pan. 

I didn’t retard these and it makes everything much easier , they rose beautifully. Very pleased . 

700g AP - Arrowhead Mills

240g cold water

56g milk powder

34g non- diastatic malt powder 

20g salt

600g active levain

Usual 6 sticks. I only used SD levain no YW  but as last time I used 160g very ripe/ ready levain instead of 80g. They are a tad more sour than I like. But my taster loved them. 

The crumb is very very shiny which I haven’t noticed before. I’m going to add 3% non diastatic malt for browning in the next iteration. 

Haven’t cut it yet. I haven’t made this one in awhile. Sorted through past posts and decided to to try with different grains. My YW has been going strong as has my SD culture. I used 1/2 YW levain ( made with AP flour) and 1/2 SD levain also with AP flour. I also used 200 g of straight AWY. Mock mill grains, rye, white hard  Spring wheat, Yecoro Rojo  and added Arrowhead AP. Includes the Trinity as usual ( buttermilk today). Overnight bulk retard shaped and rose this morning as baguettes baked. Will post crumb when cools. 

This is batch 9 of my 20 kg sack of T 65 French flour from L'Epicerie. 800 g per batch of 6 loaves . I’m very pleased. This is a first using 100% YW levain . I tweaked the ingredients by doubling the levain from 80g to 160g and adjusted the ingredients to reflect that. I also baked 3 per pan rather than 2 and increased the baking time. 

Here’s the crumb. The flavor is exceptional. 

white chicken chilie with roasted Hatch Chilies .

David posted his SFSD years ago. What an amazing bread that I’ve made many times over the years. When I was hunting for a cherry- pecan combo bread up came David SFSD and Ian’s take on the formula. 

An amazing combo to be sure. I used dried UP Michigan cherries instead of figs , as one version suggested. Ha … cherries weigh less so I have a LOT of cherries. I folded them in with the final shaping and had lots of “ loose ends” lol. I love them slightly charred when toasted. Not everyone in my household would agree with the smoke lol. 

So light and crisp! Toppings are sauce and sweet sausage with Fresh Mozzarella, Monterey Jack and Parmesan. Love the flavor with incredible mouth feel. Definitely looking forward to the rest of the crusts. 




I made 2000g of my usual dough. This time I milled 260g of Breadtopia’s White Spring Wheat for the levain, added 7 g of ADY and 100 g of Apple Yeast Water because …. why not! 

Oh my . There’s so much going on here I think I channeled Ian! 😊🙏

We are weekending with the grands. They are 6 & 8 and pros now after several years of pizza experience. 

They know exactly how much topping and sauce they each like. They relish their designs and then devour their creations . 

It’s a done deal. I decreased the water 30g. Not anything else changed. It makes a whopping difference in the dough manageability. T 65 is a fussy flour. 

These are 227g each x 6 

YW was very active. Dough was extremely easy to fold etc. It rose like crazy overnight in bulk retard. And there’s where I’ll be making a very big change. It’s a pain to retard 6 baguettes but with the exponential growth overnight I had to deflate to maneuver and preshape and shape and their isn’t any way to recover the lift.