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Spelt, honey, and walnuts seem to like each other's company, as demonstrated very happily by this bake. It's true that the scoring leaves a lot to be desired and the loaves could have come out of the oven sooner. Regardless, the crumb was moist and the taste more delicate than the ingredients might suggest, just right for sandwiches in fact.

I've done a few variations on breads with a high proportion of whole spelt up to 100% over the last few months, and enjoyed all of them. There's an elastic quality to spelt flour that makes even sticky, wet doughs pleasant to work with, and whole spelt seems to rise more contentedly than whole wheat.

The recipe isn't especially original. It's largely adapted from Jeffrey Hamelman's Honey Spelt Bread that he included in the second edition of Bread, but this uses yeast and doesn't have walnuts. There's also some influence from the Dinkel-Walnussbrot recipe posted on The Fresh Loaf by hanseata (http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/22236/dinkelwalnussbrot-spelt-walnut-bread) a few years ago which seems to have inspired lots of bakers since.

Anyway, my formula today used 75% whole spelt (bread flour made up the rest), with a 25% sourdough pre-ferment made up of spelt and wheat flours in the same 75:25 ratio. Hydration was at 73%, and the other ingredients apart from salt were 4% honey, 10% chopped walnuts, and 0.2% fennel seed. I retarded the shaped loaves for 18 hours in the fridge, and left them out at room temperature for 2½ hours before a 40-minute bake.

My sourdough starter was perky from the beginning, and came through with a gratifying oven spring:

The darkened crumb contributed by the walnuts is one of the features of this bread I like most. I'm definitely going to bake it again.

This loaf was made with Gold Medal white whole wheat flour. It was baked in an oversize loaf pan (10"x 5") with the final baked weight at 2 pounds. The dough was quite slack (78% absorption). In the past, I have had less oven spring with stone ground flour (being fairly coarse in nature), but lately the volume has improved. Re-mix time has been reduced to 3minutes 45 seconds, with good results. And the flavor of the stone ground flour is superior to fine ground (in my opinion).

Bob

Hello one and all.

Just thought i'd share some pictures of the bread i've been churning out of my home kitchen. 

Having a day job is annoyingly getting in the way of my new bakery venture. But I work for a college, so in the summer I'll hopefully be baking full time in a real oven in a premises. But until then, I'm like a micro bakery I suppose. Anyway, here are those pictures:

Mini 'Field loaf'

Field Loaf for deliveries.

What a trophy.

Hint o' rye. 

Two large ones delivered. 

That's what i've been doing over the last two weeks.

If you want more in depth bakery movements go here:

http://thesnapery.wordpress.com/

Good day people!

RPS.

MORRRNNIINNGGGG!!

I have posted a new blog entry on my first order here. Check it out!!

http://thesnapery.wordpress.com/2014/03/23/191/

RPS. x

This week I have a baking theme of Yellow, baked a Pumpkin Loaf and a pumpkin bagel with sprouted wheats

Heres the formula i used for pumpkin loaf. The Toasted pumpkin seeds compliment really well with this bread, giving it a nutty kick!! fantastic with veg and veg burger.

      I'm on a mission to not buy anymore bread. Sure, I'll still buy loaves from bakeries that I respect or that have an interesting loaf I want to try but when it comes to my daily sandwich loaves I've decided to make them myself from here on out. Why did I decide this? For one thing, I know how to make bread and I like doing it so it'd be kind of dumb not to. But the real reason stems from a recent visit to the local health food supermarket. While browsing the aisles, I decided to take a look at some sandwich breads and find out what they're made of. I expected the loaves at this store to contain whole ingredients with no added chemicals considering this was a health food store. For the most part the loaves had decent ingredients but I was surprised to find that almost every single sandwich loaf contained added gluten. I was a bit disappointed. I'm definitely not one to jump on the "gluten is evil" bandwagon, in fact I love gluten, but could the fact that we're pumping pure gluten into supposedly healthy loaves of bread have something to do with the rise in people who can't seem to tolerate it? I don't really have the answer to that question(and it doesn't seem like food scientists do either yet) but I do think I could do better than these supermarket breads from both a health and flavor standpoint.

     My goal is to make great tasting sandwich breads that are healthy and last a long time. I will try to document many of them here.

   The first loaf I've made in this endeavor is a naturally leavened 75% whole wheat sandwich loaf packed with seeds. If my goals are to have a tasty, healthy and long lasting loaf then I think I've definitely found it with this bread.

The combination of toasted sunflower seeds, sesame seeds, millet, amaranth and flax seeds is insanely delicious. Honestly, it kind of blew me away. It has a perfect nuttiness that makes me want to eat endless slices of this bread on its own with nothing on it. The grocery store loaves this loaf is replacing cannot compete. The 75% whole wheat adds a nice robustness while still allowing for a nice open and soft texture.

I recently read the bread chapter in Michael Pollan's new and highly fascinating book Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation, which I highly recommend reading as it was super informative about wheat, milling and the health properties of bread, and two things really stuck out in my mind regarding health. One, is that the way in which grain is milled has a substantial effect on the level of nutrition it contains. For example, the industrial method of milling uses roller mills and first separates the germ and bran(the healthiest parts of wheat) from the endosperm. This creates white flour. So when a big flour company wants to make whole wheat flour it must first make white flour and then add the germ and the bran back to the white. Apparently, many of the nutrients available in the wheat kernel are lost in this process. Traditional stone milling keeps the bran, germ and endosperm together at all stages of the milling process and preserves the entire nutritional spectrum of the wheat. Who knows what method of milling created the flour in the super market loaves!

Another thing that Pollan explains very well in his book is that whole wheat breads are made significantly more nutritious when used in combination with a sourdough culture. This is because the sourdough breaks down enzymes in the wheat that inhibit nutrient absorption in your body. The sourdough almost pre-digests the grain for you, making it easier to digest and significantly healthier. Given these two bits of information I decided to make this bread(and all future sandwich breads I make) with flour that has been stone milled and using a sourdough starter. This bread features hard red wheat flour from Community Grains, a flour company that stone mills and uses only wheat grown in California(might as well go local too!). It's also completely naturally leavened with a long bulk fermentation in the fridge to ensure that the grain is well broken down by the acids in the sourdough.

I have made sandwich loaves in the past that were really good for the first couple days and then started to become very weak, dry and crumbly after that. It's hard to eat an entire loaf of bread in a couple days if you're only using it for your daily sandwich. So with this loaf I also wanted to put a focus on keeping quality. I did three things to help extend the life of the bread:

1. I used sourdough which lowers the Ph of the bread(more acidic) which gives a stronger structure to the final product and inhibits mold growth.
2. I used apple cider vinegar which has similar effects as the sourdough and acts as a preservative.
3. I made this very high hydration at 95%. In my experience, the wetter your dough is the longer it takes to dry out. Some bakers, such as Richard Bourdon, also believe that wetter doughs allow the starches in the dough to cook more fully making the final product more digestible.

Conclusion

All in all, this loaf definitely met all my requirements of a good sandwich loaf. It is very tasty with the seeds and a very mild sourness from the sourdough. It is extremely healthy and so far after 4 days of use it still has a very soft and moist crumb. Success!

For the formula and more photos visit http://abreaducation.com/blog/?p=349

I made zolablue's (Dan Leader's) semolina sandwich loaf. It definitely had some rising power!

Proofing for only 30 minutes

Baking in the oven

Monster loaf

Crumb shot (sadly with a huge air pocket)

I also baked rye bread using Michael Ruhlman's recipe .

And I'm always practicing my croissants. I was quite pleased with the honeycomb structure in these chocolate ones.

Starter update:

My starter is now 15 days old. Around day 11, it started smelling like acetone. I've spent the past 4 days trying to get rid of the acetone smell. With all the great advice in various past TFL posts, I was able to remedy the situation. And if all goes well for another couple days, I can move it from the kitchen countertop (with daily feedings) to the refrigerator (for less frequent feedings).

Here's my result, the edges got a little misshapen due to the towel in my banneton, and the parchment paper in the dutch oven, I was trying to follow the directions as close to the letter as possible for my first attempt. 

I didn't get consistently giant holes like everyone else seems to, but that's ok, the bread tastes great, and I now can use it for grilled cheese sandwiches without worrying about setting off the damn smoke detector.

My wife scans King Arthur's recipes about once a month. She found this recipe recently, and asked me to bake them. I've learned not to say "No", but I was afraid she would be disappointed. I've not been very successful making scones in past times. They'd come out dry and dense. Consequently, I've not made them in years.

I was pleasantly surprised with these. Despite the liberal amounts of bacon and cheddar in the mix the scones are light, delicate and full of flavor, much like a well-made biscuit. I think the doubled amount of baking powder--1 tablespoon in two cups of flour--is the reason, and I'll take some of the credit for not mishandling the dough.

Here's the link to the recipe.

http://www.kingarthurflour.com/recipes/bacon-cheddar-chive-scones-recipe

David G

This week I tried the Cromarty Cob from Bread Matters by Andrew Whitley.  The element that makes the bread distinct is the use of a healthy dose of rye starter instead of wheat starter to kick-off the fermentation.  Aside from that, this bread could be put together in whatever way suits your taste.  I decided that my taste would be well served by the formula as written (and I was not disappointed!).  The flour blend is a 50/50 mix of whole wheat and white flours.  For the whole wheat component I used freshly milled hard red wheat, and for the white component I followed the recommendation in the book – AP flour in the leaven and bread flour in the final dough.  I didn’t change much, but I did double the formula to end up with one great, big loaf (about 2kg of dough).  I also reduced the water by just a touch, fermented a little cooler and baked a little hotter.

I couldn’t resist the "C" for Cromarty scoring.  Actually, I appreciate the suggestion, because I still have the hardest time deciding how to score my loaves!  I decided to snip it in with scissors - I didn't trust myself to get it right with a blade.  I think the effect was pretty nice.

The result was great.  A hearty loaf with a soft crumb and substantial crust.  Though, I think the crust would have been even better with a hotter bake.  The rye sour adds an extra dimension to what would already be a flavorful loaf.  The only problem I had was underestimating the vigor of a liquid rye sourdough.  The 200% hydration rye sour ferments at an astonishing rate compared to my stiff whole wheat starter.  My first attempt at this loaf was… not good.  Now that I know what to expect, however, I plan on keeping my starter this way at least until the weather gets hot.  The aroma of the rye starter alone is worth it!  I can’t believe I didn’t try this sooner.

Marcus