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I liked the Buttermilk-Whole-Wheat-Bread which I baked just a couple days ago so much that I decided to continue with 100% whole wheat. The Buttermilk-Whole-Wheat-Bread was very soft and light, I have never seen a whole-wheat bread like this.

I adapted the recipe I used the last time. It was, for my taste, somewhat to sweet and it lacked a real crust. And I decided to substitute the buttermilk by a yoghurt-water-blend, because that's what I always got on hand here. (Whereas plain buttermilk is often hard to get.) And I increased the hydration by a lot. And I used this time a preferment, with sourdough - In order to get a deeper, less sweet flavor.

A lot of changes, you see. I wasn't to worried that anything could go wrong, because I think the reason why this bread came out so light is, first of all, proper kneading, and secondly, some acidic dairy products.

Preferment:
20 g mature culture
175 ml water
250 g whole-wheat flour (I always use home-ground flour)

Final dough
580 g whole-wheat flour
25 g vital wheat gluten
17 g salt
1 teaspoon dry yeast
20 g honey
30 g butter
150 g yoghurt (I used 3% fat yoghurt)
320 + 100 ml water

1. I mixed the ingredients of the preferment and kept it over night in a warm place (I put it into the microwave, with the door a little bit open - this way, the light stays on and I get a temperature of ~81° F)
2. The next morning, I let the remaining flour autolyse for an hour. (I mixed the flour with the gluten first, then with all of the yoghurt and 320 ml water.)
3. Then I mixed the preferment and the flour-water-dough with the remaining ingredients (not the last 100 ml water though) and I kneaded it by hand using the Bertinet method for 15 minutes. While kneading, I incorporated another 100 ml of water. The gluten was perfectly developed, even better than the last time.
4. first fermentation: until doubled, it took me about two hours. Then I degassed the dough very well and shaped it into a boule again.
5. second fermentation: until doubled, it took me about 1.5 hours.
6. I divided the dough into two pieces, preshaped them and let them rest for a couple minutes. then shaped them into sandwich loaves, rolled them in rice flour (I use whatever I've got on hand . . . coarse wheat, bran, oats . . .) and put them into bread pans.
7. final fermentation: until the loaves reached well over the edges of the pans, about one hour.
8. I slashed the loaves and put them in the 220° C hot oven and steamed well. After 20 minutes of baking, I took them out of the pans and baked them until done on a baking sheet. (another 20 minutes.) I covered the loaves with aluminium foil for the last ten minutes.

I think the bread had about as much volume as the last time, I'm very pleased with that. It has quite a sour flavor. It's definitely a good flavor, but for my taste it's somewhat to sour for being a sandwich bread. I will change something about that. The bread did well with the higher heat and I think that I'll bake this kind of recipe in these settings in the future. It still didn't have a crunchy crust, but that's not what I'm looking for in a sandwich bread either. I will reduce the amount of water somewhat, because it simply was harder to shape with a hydration of 86 % and the result wasn't significantly better. Maybe something around 75-80% the next time? I'm happy with the reduction of sugar though!

I think, the next time I'll bake this bread with a yeast preferment and simply add a little of sourdough to the final dough. Or should I include some whole rye for a deeper flavour? I'd like to experiment with some further additions to the dough, like soaked wheat chops or some seeds (incorporated in the dough when the gluten is developed). I'll do some more experiments, I promise!

Salome

All credit for these go to DedeMed and her inspirational YouTube video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEJy5Yksew8&feature=channel.

For the dough I've used about 2/3 cup warm water, 3/4 cup of SD starter left over from refreshments, 1 cup all purpose flour, 1/2 cup wholemeal flour, 2tbsp Extra virgin olive oil, 1tbsp active dry yeast, 1tsp salt.

I mixed all ingredients with wooden spoon, did slab and stretch for a few minutes, proofed in an oiled bowl for 1hour or till doubled.

Divided dough into 8 balls, rested for 10 minutes, rolled out each ball on floured surface, stuffed as per video. Dough was so tender and very easy to work with.

For the stuffing, I didn't have enough spinach as per original recipe so I added chopped sun-dried tomatoes and black olives. Great recipe, very easy to put together and very versatile, my family enjoyed this and I think I'll be making it again with different fillings.

I've been messing with Hamelman's 40% rye with caraway.  I like to stick to wild yeast and the bread calls for a bit of commercial yeast.  He does suggest that you can just leave it out and ferment it longer, but I wanted to experiment with a long bulk fermentation of the wheat along with the 15 hour preparation of the rye sour.  I wanted to bring out more flavour in the wheat as a background against the caraway.  It worked out well with my starter refreshment schedule; I have 30g of 100% rye starter discard, I used 17g with the 363g of rye flour and 300g of water.  And 13g with the 544g of wheat flour and 318g of water.  I didn't want the wheat to get into a proteolytic state, but I did want lots of time for flavour to develop.  I mixed both sourdoughs and put them in a 70F water bath for 15 hours.

I put them in the bath at 6pm last night so they'd be ready at 9am today to turn into dough.

Actually I'm still working on my ideal temperature for the wheat sour fermentation.  I've tried keeping it next to the bed so that I can see it every time I get up to pee and once there's definite movement I put it in the 'fridge.  With only the 10g of starter in there it does take awhile to get going.  I don't really like the wheat being cold and the rye not, so I'm not too keen on that method.  Tonight is cooler so I'm going to put it outside on the deck and then in the morning I'll put it in the water bath with the rye.  I'm making a couple of loaves to send to my brother.  Starting around 11 tonight means I'll be mixing the dough around 2pm tomorrow.  I should put the wheat in the water bath with the rye around 9am.

That's a little more rise than I wanted with the wheat.  I have been shooting for a little less than double.  Interestingly the rye sounded like a bowl of Rice Crispies when I opened it.  Very noisy.

I've played with a few ways to combine the two sours and this is what's working best for me.  I spread the wheat out on the counter and smear the rye around on top of it.  I sprinkle in some salt and caraway along the way.  (17g of each total)

Then enfold the rye with the wheat.  I sprinkle more salt and caraway seeds in along the way.

It's pretty messy at first, but it quickly comes together into a nice dough.  I knead it 5 minutes maximum to be sure to not overdo the rye but still get everything homogenous.  The gluten is already nicely developed in the wheat.  A few slap and folds at the end and it's really looking good:

It's a beautiful dough very quickly.  I let it bulk ferment a bit more.  It's already pretty developed from the last 15 hours.  Today it just moved a little after 45 minutes.  Sometimes it's more active than that.  I want to get some gas structure, I have been waiting for it to about half again in bulk, but today it just wasn't moving too quickly and I just moved on to shaping and proofing.  The dough does feel a bit putty-like compared to all wheat dough.

I think dough in a couche is beautiful.  Two loaves, each about 780g of dough.

I let them proof an hour, seam side up.  I rolled the tops in caraway seeds prior to proofing.  I misted before scoring.  I baked at 460 10 minutes with steam and baked another 20 minutes at 430F.

voila!  I like the oven spring.

et voila!  Kinda weird lighting, sorry about that.  The crumb is plenty open, it's moist but not the least bit gummy and I think the taste is more tangy and complex.  I've made this a few times now and it's seeming to be something that I can count on.  Hopefully those aren't famous last words.  It has been very satisfying to apply some of the things that I've learned here to managing the long wheat sour ferment especially (low inoculation, cool temp, low hydration, long ferment).

By the way, this rye starter is about 3 - 4 weeks old.  His name might be Sparky.

:-Paul

My trusted sourdough starter is a firm white one, that I've had for just under a year now. We got off to a shaky start, but it's become amazingly reliable and flexible. It seems to respond very quickly to feedings and has a great leavening capacity. My only minor complaint would be that it's very mild in flavour, and imparts only a slight tanginess to the loaves. So, as an experiment, I decided to start a new rye starter from scratch, and see if this would result in more sour breads. I had lots of rye flour on hand, and rye starters are said to be among the easiest to get going (in addition to e.g. spelt starters or rice starters). I used the recipe in "Bread": Equal weights of whole rye flour and water, mix and let sit 24 hrs. I went with 50 gr. each of flour and water:

After 24 hrs., keep 50 gr. of the original mix, and add 50 gr. each of flour and water. Let sit another 24 hrs., and then continue this regimen, but with 12 hr. intervals instead of 24.

Nothing much happened the first 24 hours, but on the second day I got hit pretty badly with leuconostoc. The mix had tripled in volume, looked dark brown with hints of green, it was very runny and smelled rather pungent. *yuck* Well, soldier on, I say. The activity dropped markedly during day 3, and the odour became a lot milder, and smelled more of yogurt than of the leuconostoc madness. Nothing much happened in volume until the end of day 4, when the mix all of a sudden started tripling again! Phew! The culture started to smell healthy, looked greyish in colour (as I expected it should), and had a fragile, but not runny consistency when ripe and ready for new feeding. Below is a photo taken sometime during day 5. You can see some small patches of rye flour on the top - I usually sprinkle rye flour over the mix after each feeding, so that it's easy to gauge the level of activity:

I followed Hamelman's directions, and kept feeding out day 6, and then two more days to ensure that things are stabilized and healthy.

Today I decided to try it out, and devised a simple multigrain loaf for it. This one's approx. 33% whole rye, the rest bread flour, with a soaker of oat bran, flax, sunflower seeds and rye chops. I used equal amounts water and yogurt in the final dough, and added a tiny spoon of honey for good measure. I didn't use any commerical yeast, but prefermented 25% of the flour (new rye starter). I went with a 2 hr. bulk ferment (fold after 1 hr.) and retarded in fridge for 8 hrs. It could probably have gone a bit further in the fridge for the final proof, but I got scared with a third rye in there. It kept up well, and rose remarkably during baking:

It was a lovely loaf, and I must admit, slightly tangier in taste than what I get with my firm white starter. A bit more sour, not overwhelmingly so, but pleasantly tangy. I think I'll keep both for the time being, and see how the new born develops in flavour as the weeks go on. In the meantime I need to come up with a name for it... I'm thinking about Aladdin, but it's far from settled yet.

To celebrate the new starter and nice tasting multigrain, I decided to have a go at a caramel cake from Friberg's second pastry book. It's a delicious concoction of a thin shortdough bottom, and two sponge cake layers sandwiching a rich caramel cream. Here I'm folding caramel sauce into the cream:

And below is the cake before icing. It looks pretty cool if you ask me: You make one almond sponge and one cocoa almond sponge. After they've cooled, you use a cookie cutter to cut out the middle of each sponge, and interchange the middle cut outs. You only use half of each sponge in this assembly, so the remaining sponge layers can be frozen. Lovely thick caramel cream in the middle:

The caramel cream is set with some gelatin, so after a few hours in the fridge, you're set to ice it. Cut the protruding shortdough bottom, then ice with whipped cream. Decorate with some chocolate shavings on top:

And here's the first slice:

The taste is absolute caramel heaven! I really like the unusual look given by the two sponges, and the shortdough bottom gives a nice constrasting crunch to the creamy rest of the cake.