Blog posts

Ready for sandwiches. A close, elastic crumb, with just enough moisture.

Hi Loafers,

I baked 2 of these pumpkin loaves last night. Using some steam pumpkin puree, organic strong bread flour, rye starter, an egg, some avocado oil, a table spoon of organic brown sugar, salt and water. 

pretty much as per Ru's post of 31 October, but as I don't like walnuts I used macadamia nuts and added sunflower seeds as well. Nuts and seed % as her bake.  Bulk ferment a touch longer, room temperature about 23°c. Final proof went quickly as I wanted to bake today (no retard) and an hour and a half later I put it in refridgerator to slow things while oven heated up.

First off I baked the two 1:2:3 loaves I had made (wasn't happy with last bake at all so needed to repeat it) and these turned out well so that is good.  

This is another experiment in preparation for bread evaluation this Friday. 15% whole grain spelt, 15% whole grain rye, 70% AP flour,  8.5% of starter from AP flour @100% hydration, allover hydration 72%. Rye and spelt grains were freshly milled at home. BF for 3.5 hours at dough temperature 28dC. After adding 2% salt after 30 minutes from initial mix I used Trevor's "stretch and scoop” method for about 8 minutes with a short brake and then S&F at 30 minute interval.

Sometimes, people just want a loaf of nice white bread, you know? I tried this recipe from America's Test Kitchen's book "Bread Illustrated", and found it to be just the thing. It's a soft bread, enriched with some olive oil and a bit of sugar, made with AP flour instead of bread flour. A pre-ferment (sponge or poolish) gives it a flavour boost too. The dough is very soft and delicate.

SFBI Pain au Levain w/caraway seeds.  Inside and (clearly) outside.

It seems like forever since I baked bread that wasn't rye.  This bake had the most explosive oven rise I have ever had, and I'm not sure why.  These were shaped oval, but almost grew round.  I used 50-50 Central Milling Artisan Baker's Craft and 85 Extraction Wheat, both malted.  I'm not sure what the equivalent percentage WW in this recipe would be.  The recipe is 75-25 bread flour to WW, so my experiment seemed low risk.

I was inspired recently to try a different sourdough recipe, taking some time away from my favourite. Whereas Trevor's has only 50g levain/starter (about 5% of the flour is pre-fermented), the Bread and Butter Project's sourdoughs call for 275g starter (about 22% pre-fermented).

Lots of decorating throughout the house, plus some stollen for when family visit for the holiday.  Maybe some for gifting, too.  Fortunately, the white stuff hasn't shown up outdoors, yet.  

Paul