I came across a delightful and insightful radio interview of Jeffrey Hamelman on NPR.

While the interview took place in 2004, I found his background and passion for his work fascinating.  Little wonder he authored such an excellent book.

He also shared his experiences at the Coupe du Monde de la Boulangerie, and I love his comment that America makes the best bread in the world - and the worst.

Great stuff.  Enjoy!

St. Patrick's day is coming up soon and I was thinking of making Hamelman's Irish Soda Bread. I ordered some wholemeal wheat from King Arthur's, but noticed that the recipe calls for "wheat flakes". Anybody have an opinion on this bread? And, what are/is "wheat flakes"?

--Pamela

I've been curious why Jeffrey Hamelman's unkneaded six-fold French bread appears at page 249 in some copies of his book, "Bread," while other copies show a recipe for beer bread.

So I went to the KFA baking circle forum and asked the question.  A nice member there e-mailed King Arthur and received the following response from Jeffrey Hamelman:

"The beer bread was in the first printing of the book, and for the second 
printing I removed it and added in the no-knead French. I'll look and 
see if I have the no-knead here and send it to you. And you can feel 
free to disseminate it if you wish. 
Thanks and best wishes, 
Jeffrey Hamelman "

My procrastination paid off since I have the second printing.  Nice to know that we can reproduce the recipe here.

I need some help with a rising time question.

I am going to try an experiment this weekend and bake baguettes using sourdough only and no baker's yeast. I am basing this on Hamelman's Baguettes with Pâte Fermentée and just built my sourdough fermentée.

Hamelman's yeasted recipe calls for a bulk fermentation of 2 hours and a final fermentation of 1 to 1.5 hours. If I understand correctly, when using sourdough versus baker's yeast, rise times increase.

Is there a general rule of thumb to follow in converting a yeasted recipe to a sourdough version? Any suggestions?

John

Last weekend I finally had time for baking, after a long and exhausting week. Continuing the exploration of Hamelman's book "Bread", I ventured into the Detmolder method section. I love ryes and I love a good challenge, so naturally the three-stage 90% rye had to be made. My rye starter is always very lively, but to my surprise, it was going out of control by the end of the third build. The final dough was a sticky mess; in fact, it resembled clay more than any sort of dough. Hamelman warns not to add more flour even if the dough is tacky. I stuck to his advice. This is what came out of the oven.

I waited a day before cutting into it to let the crumb set fully. This loaf was sweeter than any other rye I've made before. The crust was delectably crunchy and almost nutty. The crumb was dense, as could be expected of a 90% rye, yet moist and airy.

That same weekend I also made a whole wheat muligrain (pg.169). Hamelman recommends some grains, but leaves the choice largely up to the baker. I used a combination of wheat and rye berries, corn meal, millet, and sunflower seeds. The flavor was incredibly rich and deep, with a tender whole grain presence in the middle and a lingering sweet honey finish.

And finally, there was a Vermont sourdough (pg. 153), also delicious. The dough was a pleasure to work with. This book is a tremendous resource, I can't recommend it enough.

I'm new here and have enjoyed all the great information.  Thanks to everyone.

I've been a bread baker for years, starting with Amy's Bread (anyone still bake from that book?  I loved many of the recipes).  

I recently got Hamelman's book out of the library and almost didn't try any recipes because everything is about mixing on speed 1 or speed 2 and I'm trying to get away from using a mixer at all.  But reading around here I seems that some people use Hamelman's formulas and mix and knead by hand.  So any advice about how to convert the mixer speeds to hand kneading would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers,

--Dave

I've been working on Hamelman's 66% rye sourdough, which uses an 80% hydration rye starter.  I'd like to try using a 125% hydration rye starter, as Leader recommends.  How would I adjust the formula to compensate for the extra water in the culture?

SOL

I am beginning to bake from Jeffrey Hamelman's book Bread, have had two wonderful successes, but am terribly confused on how to come up with 2 tablespoons of mature culture required for the Whole-Wheat Levain as described on p 168.

1. I don't have to buy the mature culture, right?
2. I need to make the mature culture, right?
3. Am I supposed to use the instructions in the appendix of the book and then incorporate 2 tablespoons of it?
4. Is a mature culture different from a sourdough culture?

As I scoured the book going from section to section I simply could not figure out what it is that I am supposed to do in order to make this bread. My frustration partly means I'm learning, which is exciting, but I'm also frustrated.

 Could someone please help me (and reference the book if possible)?

 Kind regards,

AW

Yeah, it's been a fair while. Not that I haven't made bread, I have, numerous batches in fact. But they were really mostly "sandwich" bread and all basic yeast things; specifically "Susan's Farmhouse White Sandwhich Bead" but using part whole wheat. Not as tasteless as store bought "Wonder" type stuff (which they were meant to replace) but not terribly exciting, either. On the up side, these numerous plain breads allowed me to play with the oven's temp a bit and I think I have it tweaked to be pretty accurate now so things don't burn too much. So let's get on with today's bake.

Hamelman's Vermont Sourdough

"Today" is a bit of a misnomer, of course. I started this batch three days prior after feeding Audrey 2 and Carl out of a two week stint in the fridge. By their third feed they were back to bouncy and fluffy within 8 hours (I was off at work, so I don't really know how quickly they doubled). So this has been a few days process. The pre-build took a while - but thats' expected - then the fermentation period took the better part of a day and the final proof took over 16 hours of fridge time. This recipe is the Hamelman Vermont Sourdough which I got off here.

This time around, the dough was decidedly stiffer than the Norwich Sourdough I'd made which is a take off from this one. Not exceedingly stiff but stiff enough that when I slashed, it didn't all just collapse and make flat brad as the others I have previously made. (This is decidedly my fault for not yet knowing what the dough should be like and adjusting.) 

The crust is also more solid although it looks like it may have been a bit overdone here. The recipe says 460ºF for 40 minutes but I pulled it out at 30 as it was already rather dark. Looking at the bottom, it's a tiny bit burned, though just a small black stripe along the center. So the oven is still not 100% accurate. But the loaves' insides had reached 200ºF therefore it was done enough already.

I picked Audrey 2 as the starter for this one simply because as I was feeding the two starters, she seemed to bulk up the most - maybe 3 times vs Carl's 2.5 times. So both would have worked well. In fact, Carl seems to have a slightly stronger smell and taste. So maybe I'll give that one a try next in this recipe.

And here's the crumb. Nice mid-sized holes, not too fine or too big, the loaf shape is decidedly oval as opposed to pancake so we're good here. The flavour is nice although not terribly sourdough-ish. Perhaps it will develop a little over the next day or so. Although I expect the loaf may not survive long enough to see. The other one needs to go in the freezer as there are already a couple of types of bread on the counter.

All in all, this one is a success. We'll be making Hamelman's Vermont again.