trailrunner's blog

I am biking from St. Augustine FL to SanDiego CA. I am using this as an opportunity to raise awareness of hunger in this country . My local Food Bank, Food Bank of East Alabama, is helping me by placing barrels in local spots in my town of Auburn/Opelika AL. I am trying to raise 3100# of food as well as $ 3100 since the trip is 3100 miles. We will take about 60 days to do this so it is also a personal celebration of my 60th year on this earth. I am in Day 7 today and we are in Marianna FL. at the library. I will check in periodically. Here is my log so far .

I have had a busy but very productive day . I made the decision to do a large bake of the Nury so that I could really study the wet dough and make adjustments as the day went by rather than having to wait 1-2 weeks to bake again. We have a large party coming up so the bread will be perfect for that. Gotta watch my Saints win the Super Bowl !

I used the rice flour in a linen lined basket and WHAT a difference. Sunddenly, as you said, the loaf comes out like teflon and the slash...well all I can say is WOW ! I used about 1 tsp of rice flour and lightly rubbed it into the linen napkin. I turned the shaped pain de campagne into it seam side up and waited 1 1/2 hrs, preheated the iron pot for 30 min at 500 and then turned the loaf out and slashed. Placed in pot/closed/reduced oven to 460 and baked for 30 min lid on and 15 min lid off to 207 degrees.

This is the rest of this weeks' bake. This is my 2nd attempt at the Nury rye and I can definitely see a huge difference in both my abilities w/ wet dough and my starters. They are older as am I :) The bread has been commented on at length on this site so all I will say is that everyone is right...this is a fantastic bread. Thank you Zolablue for your original post, and David for his follow up comments and pics .

crust:

I found this formula on Sourdough Companion and used it as a starting point for my bread. http://sourdough.com/recipes/raisin-breadbasic-fruit-loaf..here is the link. I subbed the dates and pecans for the dried fruit. I also changed the spices . I used 400 g KA bread flour and 100 g KA ww flour. Sorghum syrup from TN for the sweetener. I baked it as one large loaf at 375 for 1hr. No steam and no stone this bake and no slash.

When nothing seems to be rational in my life and I have lost all of my center I can always turn to baking...and so it has been for 37 years or so. I made my first Challah in 1976 or so...here it is again...almost every week since then. I had some extra "discard" starter and bananas and applesauce that I made last summer and lo and behold it becomes bread and muffins. My freezer is full and for a little while the demons are held back.

This is winging its way to NYC for my best friend to use at her celebration Friday evening. I have been making Challah for well over 35 years now but only learned how to do this braid last year. Thanks to TFL for that info . Hope you enjoy and have a blessed holiday.

I haven't posted in ages . Been baking but no time these days to get on the computer. I had to post this though. I used Lildice's Ciabatta crust recipe from the pizza forum...she posted it in 2007. All I can say is...a picture is worth a 1000 words. Her inst. are perfect and this is the best pizza I have ever eaten, let alone made. I will never use another crust.

I had an abundance of discard yesterday so got creative and made some delicious treats. My discard is made up of "alto" and "sax" a white and a rye wild yeast starter. I add to it on a weekly basis. I regularly make the banana nut bread that I have posted before. I wanted to try a bread solely made from the discard. I used the 1-2-3 formula and 2% salt also added 2 scant tsp inst. yeast for good measure. The final dough was 500g starter discard- 1000g tap water-1500g GM bread flour- 30g Kosher salt. I dissolved the starter in the water and added the inst yeast.

I haven't been taking pics lately but have been baking as usual. Wanted to thank David and also document how wonderful this formula is. I have a starter , thanks to Gaarp, that doubles in one hour. I take it out of the fridge 1x a week and feed it q 12h for a total of 2 times and it is fantastic. I also have a rye starter and a bowl of "discard". The San Joaquin is great. Here are pics. Perfect sour for us as we are not wild about lots of sour. I have found that my starter is very happy in the fridge. At least it works for me.