I am wondering if any folks on this site, have some tried and true low sodium around 100 -150 milligrams per serving recipes for bread that they liked to share.

Hi ya'll

I’ve got a question about salt. I once worked at a baker where we added 1/4 of the salt at the beginning of mixing, and the other 3/4 at the moment the mixer would go to second speed.

We used the intensive mixing methode and used a strong patent flour. After a three hour fermentation, the dough was divided and shaped (by hand), then, after a short final fermentation, baked. 

I was still a young fellow back then and just did what i was told, but now i’m thinking of it and i can’t quite figure out why we did this. Even the literature isn’t giving any answers.

Any toughts?

tnx

Flour Salt and Water are all that we need to make great bread.  So I am on the search for the best flour/salt/water for a new baking adventure/venture.

PART 1 - Salt

JohnD on sourdough.com wrote an interesting article regarding the varying qualities of salt.  The conclusion is the minerality of sea salt was superior to river or rock salt.  In my travels I have been looking for an affordable high quality salt and I am pleased to say I have found it.

My preference was to find a locally produced salt but the reality is salts in Victoria, Australia just don’t have the quality I was looking for.  So I broadened my outlook to include fair trade salt.  Salt that I could purchase directly from the farmer. (I figure that I can off set any resulting carbon footprint with tree planting which is already planned to compensate for the use of a wood fired oven).

Whilst on holidays on the east coast of Bali I ordered a bowl of chips and they where the best chips I have ever eaten. Not because of they were well cook, in fact the preparation was less than pleasing, oily and under cooked, but because they where covered in the most extraordinary salt.  When I enquired further I was thrilled to discover that the salt was produced only a short walk from where I was staying.

Amed Sea Salt is produced on small salt farms that have been producing salt the same way for generations.  At one time, several generations ago, the farms could be found scattered up and down the coast but now there are only a few left.  The salt is sold almost exclusively to locals although some restaurants are now using it.

The traditional process remains unchanged with perhaps the only amendment being plastic/hesion bags are used to line the clay filters

Step 1)Harrow the clay/soil pans and fill with sea water

Step 2)Smooth the salt and soil mixture to enable even drying

Step 3)Rake the dried salt and soil to break it up

Step 4)Put broken soil into the filter cones, lining the sides.  The cones are a lot like giant coffee filters

Step 5)Collect more sea water and fill the cone

Step 6)The sea water then filters through the salty soil

Step 7)Collect the filtered salty water and place into wooden containers to evaporate and reveal the salt.  (the wooded containers are palm trunks that have been cut in half and carved out)

In this photo the salty water is only one day old

After 3 days the salt is visible and crystalising

Step 8)After 4 days of drying the salt is ready for collection in large 5kg baskets

The salt is a wonderful color, slightly grey and so so tasty.  The local restaurants don’t use any stocks and very little additional flavoring as the salt seems to do it all.

I am looking forward to seeing how this amazing salt complements my bread.

Ingredients:

• 1 dl (100g) lukewarm to warm water
• ½ dl (50g) plain naturel yogurt
• 15g fresh active yeast
• 8 g honey
  (pref. liquid)
• 10 g sea salt
• 10 g olive oil
  (this is a minimum, feel free to use more, I reckon 25g would be ideal)
• 250g various types of flour, I used and recommend:
  30g Graham flour
  70g semolina flour
  150g wheat baking flour
• Poppy or sesame seeds or for sprinkle

This recipe is very small, the smallest I've ever made. Usually I double the ingredients mentioned, except for the yeast, the dough rises just fine with 15g.

Recipe:

(Work: 20 mins - 1st rise: 30 mins - work: 5 mins - 2nd rise: 35 mins - bake: 30 mins)
Estimated time from start to finish: 2 hours 

Mix the warm water and yogurt, so you get a tepid mixture. Add the yeast and stir till dissolved. Add salt and honey and dissolve. Add the flour to the mixture, I ususally add 100g, mix and add then add more.

Knead the dough for approximately 10 minutes, put it into an oiled container, cover it with a hot teatowel and leave it to rise for 30 mins or so, can be more or less, usually more means better and less means less good.

Should be doubled after half an hour and shape it into a loaf. Place the loaf onto your baking surface of choice. Pat the bread with milk and sprinkle the seeds on top of it. Cover it again with a warm towel and let it rise for 30-60 minutes; Afterwards put the loaf into your oven.

Bake for approximately 30 minutes, until the crust is golden and it makes that hollow sound you know so well, when you knock on the bottom of it.

Enjoy.

Help! I accidentally spilled about 1/8 to 1/4 tsp of salt into my starter! I gave it a larger than normal feed and am hoping for the best...is it doomed?

~Krista

So I've read that sometimes people add salt to soakers to constrain certain enzyme activity. Here's a post that taks about a lot of those specifics: http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/17415/baguettes-l039ancienne-cold-retardation. From what I understand, you would only want to add salt to a soaker if it contains flour, not just seeds.

My question is wouldn't it make sense then to add salt to overnight autolyses? I've been working with Don D's baguette formula specifically lately: http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/17415/baguettes-l039ancienne-cold-retardation

OK, so I made this fantastic banana bread that calls for kosher salt. First time I made it by volume, second time by weighing (first time I was in a rush and didn't want to grab the scale). I think second time was better, but it was better in other ways too.

Someone(s) just asked for the recipe and I want to be clear about the salt in the recipe. I can't assume everyone will go out and buy kosher salt just to make these breads. So, I need to be able to say, "this much kosher salt, or this much table salt". I thought that would be simple enough until I started doing a little searching - all kosher salt is not created equal!

The kosher salt I have is Morton's Course Kosher salt, which now I read, is not as course as most other kosher salts. But I'm also going to to assume, that the Morton Kosher salt is the most common in many homes if people buy kosher salt  because that's what they can get at most grocery stores.

So, I went to Morton's site and their faq says they don't recommend baking with it (lack of practice? experience?) and then they provide comparison charts, one being a one to one volume comparison. See here: http://www.mortonsalt.com/salt_guide/index.html#conversion_chart

According to that chart, when I did the volume measurement of the morton's kosher salt, I put too much (and I do think it tasted salty). Second time, I weighed, they tasted right. So, just now I weighed a tablespoon of my Morton kosher salt (did so three times to be sure I was measuring accurately) and once I got 20 grams, the other two times I got 24 grams. The recipe calls for ELEVEN grams of kosher salt. That means I doubled the intended salt the first time I baked. According to other salt weights I've encountered, 1 tablespoon of table salt equals around 18 grams.

How can my kosher salt weigh that much more than table salt? So then, I weigh my table salt and I measure a tablespoon three times and get 32 grams, 26 grams, 28 grams on three successive tries, so around 28 grams per tablespoon. Is it my scale? (I have an older version of this scale: http://www.amazon.com/Soehnle-65105-Digital-Kitchen-Silver/dp/B000JG4C2W/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=home-garden&qid=1280847660&sr=1-2 ). Could old batteries be throwing things off? (I've had the scale for 4-5 years and never have needed to change the batteries). or are my ingredients "wet"? (we didn't have AC for a month while we were waiting our turn for the technicians to install new) and then the last few days we turned it off as the weather was nice. But that doesn't make sense either - my table salt was in a sealed container.

ACK!!! Now what do I do? And if weighing is more accurate than volume, what does that mean that my weights are off? Is everything off equally? Or, am I messing up proportions?

Melissa

I expect most of you that have used my recipes have noticed that there is no salt in the engredients, this is because I always use salted butter. I never buy lard or margerine  or any other shortening... just incase you wondered about the salt... ;-)))

Oh I do add salt when I make bread,,,,,,,

 qahtan   

as a rookie to this field of culinary bakerisms, my question is of the salt and yeast relationship> touching OK? Mixed together? or can I add salt after first rising? 

Ok, this is my first entry into my personal blog and hopefully not my last one (excuse my syntaxe as French is my first language...).

It has been a long journey into trials and errors, but I kept my passion for making the perfect sourdough bread and today, I believe I have achieved the beginning of the perfect sourdough loaf, for myself anyway.

So here it is... I follow these instructions from Susan from San diego, up to the 'T' without changing a thing.  Et voilà, my perfect sourdough bread is borned.

It was made with my homemade starter 'Bécacine', borned May 05 2010.  The smell of sourdough is very present and I am so pleased with the easiness of this method.  For baking, I used the method 'Roasting lid' because this method seems to work the best for my condition at the moment : living 6,000 feet above the sea level in high altitude, in central Mexico, and I have to make breads with what I have around me and not always run to the store, which is pratically, non-existant here. 

For the colander, I replaced it with a straw bowl for tortilla, well floured, and cover with a coton dish towel, it worked like a charm. I don't have a pizza stone so I used the back of my cast iron pot to deposit the bread to be on it.  It did the job also.

Now, my big problem was to understand the process because here, everything with yeast in it will raise very quickly but also go down very fast because of the altitude, some days are better than others...  So the manipulation of the dough had to be restricted to a minimum and had to be studied closely to know the right time to move it.

It has been a long journey since May 05.  This bread is my 13th bread.  All the others ended up in the field for the birds, the snakes, black widow, scorpions, fire ants, etc... around me.  I could have kept them for building a wall of brick actually.

So it shows that it is not only a recipe that makes the perfect dish, it is the 'knowing how to cook, bake' that makes the difference, the location we live also and the passion for it.