Blog posts

Favorite Baking Books:

Tartine Book No. 3, by Chad Robertson.

Whole Grain Breads, by Peter Reinhart.

The Bread Baker's Apprentice, by Reinhart.

Tartine Bread, by Chad Robertson.

Flour - Water - Salt - Yeast, by Ken Forkish.

Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day, by Hertzberg and Francois.

The New Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day, by Hertzberg and Francois.

Artisan Pizza and Flatbread in Five Minutes a Day, by Hertzberg and Francois.

The Tassajara Bread Book, by Edward Espe Brown.

It's been a long, hot summer. Well...not so long, but hot. Too hot to fire up the oven here in the house--and I hate that thought. So as the temperatures are dropping, so are the levels in my flour store since I'm making up for lost time. Add to that the fact that I'm looking for a new gig--as a bread baker and you've got the perfect recipe for....well....baking. As I was researching one of the places I was applying to today, I came across a menu item that I had not heard the name of--the Bialy. I was curious because the photo they had on their site looked tempting.

This is my second einkorn loaf. The first was baked roughly half a year ago when my friend kindly offered me some einkorn berries to try out. It left me with the impression that einkorn makes a slack and sticky dough that weakens with time. For some reason, the experience isn’t quite the same this time. 

50% Einkorn Sourdough

I was not expecting this, but given how active my levain was and how strong the 85% (!!!) hydration dough seemed to be, I guess I'm not that surprised!

So... one of my cloches had thru and thru cracks in the top and bottom... so had to toss it.  Got a 3.2 qt combo cooker and decided to try one loaf with  my new cooker and new sprouted wheat.  I chose an iteration of Maurizio's Sprouted wheat loaf here:

https://www.theperfectloaf.com/sprouted-grain-sourdough-bread/

I used no AP flour, only my bread flour and also used 20% kamut.

I received requests for onion sourdough, so I decided to try a cornmeal porridge + onion loaf (similar to the porridge and shallot I made before, but different flours). I made two 900g loaves. The hydration including the porridge was very high, which made shaping difficult. I scored the loaves, but they ended up splitting open wherever they pleased! Yikes! 

A friend requested a loaf with honey and oat porridge. So this is it!

Recipe 

Makes 3 loaves 

Porridge 

100 g rolled oats

200 g water

45 g honey

40 g butter

Add-ins

75 g raw Sesame seeds 

Dough

700 g unbleached flour

200 g whole grain Red Fife flour 

160 g whole grain Einkorn flour

68 g flax, freshly ground

700 g water + 25 g

23 g salt

30 g yogurt

I made two 800g loaves with 10% starter inoculation and 78% hydration (excluding the carrots), and 2.2% salt. I used a mix of grains. I have never used 10% rye before and this is my first time using spelt. I mixed in 100g of shredded carrot, 1 tbsp cumin, 1 tbsp coriander, and 1 tbsp caraway seed (all toasted and ground except for the caraway which I left whole). I replaced most of the water with carrot juice which I made by blending 5 carrots and 250g of water together. I made some really ugly loaves this morning so here's to hoping they taste better than they look! 

• 83% hydration
• 80% bread flour
• 15% whole wheat
• 5% semolina (cuz I ran out of whole wheat)
• Bulk proofed at about 77F for 6 hours.
• Fridge proof at 41F for about 12 hours
• Baked at 450F in DO for 20
• 450 on pizza stone for 20