Blog posts

This was my take on the roasted butternut squash sourdough by Sarah Owens, but I decided to sub out the flours and make a savory version by replacing cherries with sunflower and pumpkin seeds. The hydration was only 55% before the squash and this was definitely the most disappointing crumb I have had in the last few months, but I hope it makes a decent sandwich bread. Maybe I should have developed the dough more in the mixing stage? 

I found photos of the beautiful flat breads that they bake in Uzbekistan on a travel blog and headed to my kitchen. The bread stamps that they use, called chekich, is not available here, so I spent an afternoon in the garage making my own. It is a soft fluffy bread that contains yogurt. According to their tradition the bread should be torn by hand and not sliced. Quick and easy to make and eat.

Chekich production in progress in our garage.

Hi I am new to this site and a newbie at baking bread.  I am trying to create a starter and the method I am using is from here.

I am up to day three and my starter has NOT risen.  Is there such a thing as a dead starter and can one revive same say with a few grains of yeast or apple cider vinegar to lower the ph.

OR AM I,  just impatient?  The temperature in my kitchen is between 70 and 75 F.

Can someone guide me in the right direction please.

Thanks GregT

Just saw a reference to a sourdough podcast from one of the newspapers I subscribe to.

I've not listened to it, so I can't give an opinion to the pod casts.

From a quick scan of the web site, the content looks to be quite good though.

https://www.thesourdoughpodcast.com

Sleeping Giant Brewery is one of our very successful local breweries. So when it turned out that the stout I used in this recipe last April, was no longer available, it was a no brainer to support our local brewery. Hopefully, this tastes as good as the last time!

Recipe

Makes 3 loaves

Soaker

180 g oats

200 g stout beer (Sleeping Giant Skull Rock Stout)

Dough

720 g Unbleached flour 

200 g freshly milled Selkirk wheat flour (200 g Selkirk wheat berries)

The big lesson I learned here was that it just takes autolyse time for coarse ground home-milled whole wheat to absorb the water  and make gluten.

I let the 440 g of hard white  spring wheat, 220 g of Kamut, and 25 g coarse ground millet, autolyse for 3 hours. About 86% hydration. It was still a bit like wet sand after 3 hours.

Then folded in the 141 g of 100% hydration levain, but not salt.

Let sit 30 minutes, then one set of stretch and folds.

I recently discovered a blog called: Tavola Mediterranea - Home of Culinary Archaeology on the Web. It is a fascinating and very informative blog on ancient history and baking. Two breads on this site really caught my attention and had me heading into the kitchen. The Roman Panis Quadratus and a Greek Prosphora.

It has been a while between posts.  I've been busy with the new start-up I'm working for so have not had a lot of time to post anything.  I made this tasty bake a few weeks ago.

I had found a nice surprise of Farro berries at the new Whole Foods that opened and I'm really liking the nutty flavor.  The balance of the flour was KAF bread flour along with some ricotta to soften the crumb and plenty of tasty pecans and dried cherries that were re-hydrated in water.

 This is a popular loaf for Canadian Thanksgiving.