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Lately I've been making my favourite winter sourdough. Shorter days and cold weather always seems to call for heartier loaves so I laminate mine with tons of crunchy whole hemp, nori flakes and house made rice or oat koji. I shape these into a boule or batard, retard outside overnight and just before baking smear them with tons of good quality EVOO and kosher salt. Then I bastardize them by turning them into smaller shapes I can freeze. This is mainly so we don't devour an entire loaf in one setting. These breads are somewhat addictive ( if I do say so myself)!

I managed to get my starter tripling so I figured it was time to attempt another bake. 

It's looking good but not quite right yet. Good ferment/sour notes in it, but the crumb was not as even as I'd like. I was having to do a lot of adjusting of times on the fly and having to go by feel. We are just coming out of a cold snap where I am and the temperature in the house has not been consistent as well as being pretty cold at night in particular. 

Dec. 8, 2021.  74th bake.

The goal is to make at least 1300 g of dough, of approx 90% whole grain.  1300 to 1350 of WW dough fits nicely in the lid portion of my Lodge 3.2 qt combo cooker.

I want to try out this whole grain rye flour, just to get a taste of it.  And I have this roller milled whole grain durum I need to use up.  

"These traditional French butter cookies are a snap to make. They positively melt in your mouth and make a great addition to any holiday cookie lineup. The cardamom-and-orange combination is perfect for the holidays, but if you aren’t a fan, you could simply omit those flavourings and add a bit more vanilla."—Giselle Courteau, co-owner, Edmonton

Dec. 6, 2021.  72nd bake.

The previous batch of these muffins, #71, came out pretty good. So I scaled it up to four pots from three. And made some slight adjustments, including adding 60 grams of whole rye flour.

Soaker:

This cake, a Jamaican Christmas tradition, came to my attention from a very strange direction.  

Back in October, my wife and I, along with my sister and her boyfriend, spent a long weekend in Michigan's Keweenaw Peninsula.  That's the “horn” pushing up into Lake Superior at the western end of Michigan's Upper Peninsula.  We happened across The Jampot, a bake shop operated by the Holy Transfiguration Skete Society of St. John, a Byzantine Catholic monastery.  Seriously, where else would one go to find out about a cake that is beloved on a Caribbean island?

Borodinsky the Sequel

A couple weeks ago I made a Borodinsky bread with sprouted rye kernels, homemade solod and toasted caraway. Delicious flavour, moist texture and tasted great with homemade mascarpone but pretty strong to eat with anything else.

The second time I do anything I like to change things around and start learning conceptually what happens. This often means I break something the second time around in order to learn from it going forward.

New Solod

Someone needs to explain to me why my doughs with only fruit in them move so slowly and feel super heavy? I can add the same quantity of porridge in a similar recipe and my bulk is done within a few hours. Whenever I use fruit, the dough takes forever to rise and feels really heavy. I decided not to rush this one and give it all the time it wanted. It did feel a lot better during shaping but once again, they are not light and airy loaves after baking. 

Recipe

Makes 3 loaves

Add-ins

220 g sultana raisins

Carmelized Golden Potato Bread

The basis for this bake is Hamelman’s Roasted Potato Bread from Bread (2nd Ed.).  This is my second time making it with two tweaks that I thought were minor (but turned out to be a big difference) and also baked at a lower temp this time.  I followed the recipe verbatim the first time I made it and used Mr. Hamelman’s suggestion of oven roasting the potatoes.  The bread turned out very good.