After seeing and reading about Qahtan's Guinness Chocolate Cake and how delicious it is, I had to try it. Documenting my try, which was made with Murphy's stout rather than Guinness (it's what I had) are these pics:
It turned out of the pan beautifully, Hooray!
From Maggie Glezer's Artisan Baking, you can find recipe here: http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/16020/essential039s-columbia
While I have been baking in the last several weeks, most of it has been geared to sandwich loaves. Don't get me wrong; that is some pretty important baking. While it has been nourishing to the body, it hasn't been anything to stir the soul. I've had some old favorites: Clayton's Honey Lemon Whole Wheat and plain old honey whole wheat. I gave Beatrice Ojakangas' Granary Bread a try. Lovely stuff, but not at all anything that qahtan or others who have had the real thing would recognize as such.
I started three days ago with tempering the hard red spring wheat to 15% moisture. Grinding and sifting last night to get a 86% extraction. Making and baking today. It was very wet. I might have misweighed or miscalculated. I worked in a little flour and it ended up the best tasting bread I have made in a long time. Made with flour, water, salt, and starter. It was sweat, a little sour, and had a wonderful wheat flavor. I got the red color crust I like. The family thought it was good also.
Another day with 40 degree C and another opportunity to use the restaurant bakery
Again i used coopers dark ale 1.5 litres , 1.5kg of sour dough starter, 5 kgs bakers flour, 75 grams dry yeast, 100 grams of butter, 12 grams bread improver (dobrim), 100 grams of cooking salt, 1.5 litres water.
i mixed the dark ale sour dough starter and 1 kg of flour into nice sponge batter leaving for an hour, then mix all other ingrediants and allow for bulk fermentation in this case 1 hour and fifteen minutes a good tripling of volume.
This is a project I have been working on and haven't fully perfected yet, but I think I am getting there. I am using King Arthur Whole Wheat flour and my four year old Carl Griffith's starter that I have bult into a whole wheat starter. The dough is at 76% hydration and involves a lengthy cold delayed ferment. Still feels a bit heavy for a ciabatta, but I think I may get it in a couple more tries.
And sorry for the bad pictures. I am currently shopping for a better camera.
After a long break, I'm now able to return to blogging, I hope ...
I don't want to bore you all with my baking problems (although I did with some of you, my "baking friends" ... you know Shiao-Ping!?), but I have to share with you what I think I've learned.
First I'll show you my last (I should say my first) sourdough loaf after a full month of bread thrashing.
[The loaf]
My kids' God Mother came to visit. It was a relaxing Friday night drink on the balcony. The night was clear and the breezes were cool. Autumn has finally arrived.
So, baked a lot this week in the RV. I finally solved the burning problem, thanks to TFL'er's help. The aluminum foil layer was the key. I put aluminum foil on the rack and that did it. I realized that back a few months ago, when we first got in the RV, I had baked some ginger cookies and put aluminum foil on the rack because I didn't have a cookie sheet that fit in the oven at the time. I left the foil in for awhile and was baking pretty decent breads. Somewhere along the way, I removed the foil and didn't make the connection between that and my bread burning.
