JonJ's blog

Dan's recent questions, and all of the recent discussions about yeast water have made me think of ways of making it more reliable.

Weet-bix (in South Africa and Australia, or Weetabix in the UK, apparently available in the US too...) is a breakfast cereal of 'biscuits' of wholegrain wheat biscuits. The usual way we eat it in my family is with a sprinkle of sugar on top and then allow it to soak up the milk. It can really soak up the milk. It's quite a comfort food, and would be a great way to increase dietary fibre and be fairly healthy too (if it wasn't for the aforementioned sugar).

I had all of the best intentions of sticking to the recipe on this one but diverged. Caroline's "39% WW triple levain w/ Holy Trinity add ins Pullman Loaf" intrigued me and I had every intention to make one exactly the same, but then I thought.... well I've got some spelt sprouts growing, why don't I use those instead of the wholewheat? And when it came time to adding the ingredients I realized we'd run out of honey!

David Snyder has previously posted a magnificent recipe for a Buttermilk-Spelt sourdough bread (originally by Cecilia Agni Hadiyanto). This is a tweak of David's recipe to accommodate a large preferment, mostly because I've lately been wanting shorter bulk and proof times on my breads. Since my sourdough starter hadn't been fed for a week in the fridge when I did this one, I also added in a yeast water preferment as an insurance that the bread would rise.

It seems to be a fashion here, but it was my turn to try out Benny's version of Eric's rye.

The taste was very mild, even though I used wholemeal rye flour. I think that perhaps my rye sour wasn't sour enough - started with a very sour 50g of rye starter so thought that 4 hours of 27 deg C would be enough to get a rye sour, it sure smelt sour but obviously needed more time to develop a stronger sour taste.

Texture was lovely, very soft and just like I'd expect for a deli loaf.

Just wanted to drop a note about how much I enjoyed both making and eating this bread.

This is a quality recipe. Great posts from David and Hans and lots of techniques and tricks in the comments to their posts meant this was like following a well charted path.

This bread surprised me by it's mildness. Was a pleasure to eat. Even the kids got stuck into it!

As Dan said, "bad babka" is a misnomer, and I also happen to think a "bad blueberry" bread is a misnomer. But I'm biased in liking fruit in my breads, and this particular combination of fresh blueberries and lemon zest in the bread is lovely.

Gosh. Kicking myself that I hadn't tried out parmesan in my breads before. This bread had a great combination of inclusions: 41g of parmesan cheese, grated from a frozen block. Fresh zest of one lemon, about 3 tsp worth. 2 tsp of dried origanum (marjoram). And 45g of Kalamata olives (13 ea). Incredible smell when it was out of the oven. I couldn't wait the two hours for it to cool. Was cutting into it after 40 minutes, sometimes it is the guilty pleasure of hot steamy crusty bread that is the most enjoyable.