bread1965's blog

With clearly too much time on my hands I'm constantly thinking of what to add to bread. This was a 30% whole wheat loaf with 10% cashew nut pieces and 5% flax seeds. I used 10% starter and retarded over night in the fridge for about 12 hours. It's on the very edge of being over fermented but otherwise is a great loaf. I don't really get a lot of nut flavor from it, but the crumb is super soft and toasted I got more of the earthy nutty flavour from the nuts. Nice loaf.

I've lost track of how many iterations of this I've made. But it's definitely getting dialed in. I didn't have all the right seeds this time round but wanted to make it this weekend and took some liberties taking it into a new direction - using a soaked oat porridge. It's a great bread but could have used a bit more sweetness. It took longer to proof with all the oats and lost some of it's sweetness as a result. I've found baking same day typically works best for sweetness of this bread. In this case I started the dough around 1:30pm and baked by 9:30pm.

A few months ago Hotbake posted this bread: http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/61806/fermented-chickpea-sourdough. It looked amazing and it's been bookmarked since. I had some chickpeas and thought to give it a try this week. I didn't have enough chickpeas so I scaled the recipe down a bit and think I used much less water than the original post.

I haven't tried to make this bread in a while but went back it a few days ago.

Ingredients:

400g AP unbleached

2g diastatic malt powder (homemade)

2g gluten flour

80g 100% hydration starter

300g water

80g dried raisins soaked in 40g boiling water

40g brown flax

35g raw honey

20g sesame seeds

20g pumpkin seeds

20g poppy seeds

8g sea salt

Technically this isn't bread. I've had it on my bucket list for the longest time. This is where it comes from: https://www.mynewroots.org/site/2013/02/the-life-changing-loaf-of-bread/. It's simple to make. For my taste buds I would have added a bit more salt. I'm glad I tried it, might make it again, would be great to slice and put in the oven to make crisps, but don't know this will go into regular rotation. Enjoy if you try it..

The quarantine bread bake diaries continue..

This loaf is an 80% whole wheat, 10% whole mystery flour, 10% AP using 20% levain and a same day bake. I had a small amount of whole flour but don't know if it was whole rye or whole spelt - probably spelt.  I fed the starter Tuesday night and Wednesday morning and mixed the dough around 2pm. I baked it around 10pm. It moved fast given the high whole wheat content. I also added 2% gluten flour and home made diastolic malt. 80% water. I kept the dough at 74 degrees during bulk and proof.

My kids keep telling me to "stop with the bread". I tell them I'm Italian and like carbs. They shrug and walk away...

I made Robertson's 70% whole wheat bread for us and two traditional Tartine loaves for family.  I'll have ours on Sunday for Easter dinner and provide the crumb shot then. Considering these were same day bakes (ie no overnight retard) I'm pleased with them. I suspect the one of the traditional loaves are a bit under-proofed but I'm not sure. I need to work on creating a sharper ear too..

What can I say.. I like bread.  Just some from the last two weeks.. Tartine style, others with honey..

I came across this recipe a few weeks back. It talks about making a 40% hydrated starter to be left neglected for a few weeks while acid builds up and yeast permeates the starter. Later that "seed sourdough" is used as part of the bread recipe.

I made Maurizio's waffles with some discard this morning.  You'll find his recipe here. The modification was to use a blend of 50% whole buckwheat flour and 50% unbleached bread flour in place of the 250g of all-purpose. Otherwise it was pretty much the same.  I had been accumulating starter from feedings this past week in a glass jar in the fridge.