Blog posts

Hi TFLers! Long time no hear! I've been very busy adjusting to my new career that I seldom bake and post. I hope you still remember me. I made this simple flatbread for my birthday and I paired it with homemade charcuterie (sausages in particular). It feels like a very European thing to do but since no one drinks wine or alcohol in our household, we just washed it down freshly squeezed calamansi juice and hot chocolate.

I am a sucker for fruit breads and decided to try this one. I would highly recommend this recipe, but I had a real issue getting the fruit to be well-dispersed. All of the fruit seem to be on the very top of the loaf which was frustrating. I didn't have fresh yeast so I used 1/2 tsp of instant and then 1/3 cup of fed sourdough starter. I put 5g of starter in the overnight pre-ferment and the rest when I mixed the dough the next day. I decided to make 2 smaller loaves. 

I got a copy of FWSY a few weeks ago and this was my first attempt at making a levain. My previous 3 efforts all used biga or poolish pre-ferment. I stuck to the recipe, but reduced the proof times somewhat given recommendations on this site and the temperature of my apartment (about 82 degrees). I also used about 75 degree water instead of the 90 degrees recommended since my home was warm. I also reduced the amount of instant yeast from the recommended 1/2 tsp to 1/4 tsp and increased the amount of whole wheat flour to 20% of the total flour used.

Alan posted delicious looking cinnamon raisin batards (http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/60371/maurizios-cinnamon-raisin-levain-baguettes) so I had to jump on the bandwagon too. I scaled up the original recipe from Maurizio to make three boules of my usual size which is usually around 1100 g of flour. 

 The challenge for this weekend: Vollkornbrot from Jeffrey Hamelman’s Bread. This is one of my favorite recipes because it’s surprisingly low maintenance for rye bread, and the results are fantastic. 

My weekly bake this week, and I decided to go back to my favorite flour mix - 10% WW, 10% Semolina, and 5% Rye.  Of course, the WW % is actually higher since I feed my starter with WW flour, but you get the idea! :)  I tried very hard to be as gentle as possible with my stretching, folding, and I like the results thus far (still cooling, so haven't cut into them.)  In particular, I think these loaves seemed to hold their shape after being removed from the bannetons better than any loaves I have made before.  Here are the particulars, and some pics.....

I have 4 bins of "wheat" in the pantry. They are all fresh from the vendor, at a moisture content of ~11%. If I take samples of each, mill them, and mix each sample to the same hydration, the result will range from a "brick" (Kamut) to "soup" (spelt).

A basic sourdough, Rye, WW, Bread flour..  then bagelized.

I fed my starter, and, at peak, instead of discarding it, I saved it in a jar to use as a "levain" the next day.

This was the resulting bake.

• 255g Central Milling Bread ABC+ flour
• 70g Central Milling khorasan flour
• 260g H20
• A sprinkle of poppy and sesame seeds (untoasted, although I realized I should've toasted these)

Let the oven heat up at 500F for about 1 hour before throwing the bread in.

This was my second attempt at making bread. I replaced 20% of the four with whole wheat. I had trouble getting the bread to split naturally during the bake.