Our daily experiment.
So here we are in New Hampshire. Spring is arriving early it seems, which means we will soon have to hang up our baking hat for the business season. Lately we have been experimenting with a daily loaf. Looking for the right combination that everyone in the house will enjoy. That is very hard if impossible, since one family member likes "wonderbread" style wheat and on the other end of the spectrum another enjoys a hearth style toothsome bread. Others in the household, in between. Even the english springer spaniel has a favorite in a crunchy sourdough baguette. Is there any meeting halfway? Probably not, but we are working on it. You never know. :)
Below is our daily sourdough with a little bit of wheat and spelt. The basic formula starts with Pat's (proth5) baguette formula with our slight tweaks. I know, I know blasphemy! The formula makes wonderful baguettes, which we have totally enjoyed (Thanks to you Pat!), but we needed a sandwich bread. The pictures are of the resulting loaf. We are happy with it and will keep on tweaking. Might actually find that half way point that all in the household will enjoy .
Happy Baking all!
Comments
Great looking bread! I am very impressed by your effort to make bread daily, I wish I could do something similar, but so far baking has been mostly a weekend activity for me...
Looks perfect to me, hope the whole family loves it. Great job.
What "tweaks" did you take with Pat's formula?
weavershouse
recipe ?
Best,
anna
Thank you but really I just slightly tweaked proth5's formula for our needs. The most important thing is that you must know how healthy and active your starter is. Our starter does not get refrigerated in the winter, but it fed usually twice a day. More depending on the baking. The following is what I have been doing and getting consistent results.
3oz of 100% fed starter (at peak), 6.6 to 6.8 oz of water, 8oz of KA all purpose flour, 2 oz of whole spelt, 1 oz of wheat. and .20 oz of gray sea salt.
I usually start this bread around 9am in the morning. Mix all ingredients to a shaggy mass and allow to autolyse for 1 hour. 3 stretch and folds at 10am, 11am, and 12pm. At 1:00 - pre-shape and then shape and place in a lined banneton and cover in a plastic bag. By 3:30 - check to see if it is ready or needs more time to rise. Usually by 4:15 it goes into a preheated oven at 500 which is immediately dropped to 460. Cover the bread with the stainless food pan and then inject 40 sec of steam from my handheld steamer. Bake for 15 minutes...Remove the cover and continue to bake until you see the color you wish. I know that the heavy steam gives me the shine and thin crust which I am trying to achieve...
For an all purpose sandwich bread for our use, we are getting close...:) Part of the experimenting is the fun! I bake for enjoyment, relaxation, and to know "what" is in the food we eat.
because while gratified that people would use or tweak "my" formula at all, it's really way simpler than that.
Writing a formula is simply a matter of pre ferment type and hydration, percent of flour prefermented and total dough hydration. (Along with salt and yeast percents - salt being relatively constant and yeast [if you use it] somewhat variable.)
Enrichments can add a lot to the finished bread, and if you look at a number of formulas come in fairly standard percents for different types of bread. My favorites are olive oil or butter and milk powder.
Then there are the "add ins" like soakers and other types of inclusions - which I rarely do.
My baguette formula was developed by tweaking the total hydration and percent of flour pre fermented in bake after bake after bake until I got consistent "good" (well, gotta be me, they are OK, but not, yet perfect) results. I am positively shocked that others get the same results. I always considered that the formula was somehow 'tuned" to my hands and my altitude, but recent results tell me - perhaps not.
All that being said - Great looking bread!