Blog posts

Most weekends I bake two loaves of Tartine Country Bread.  I like the repetition of making the same recipe and enjoy seeing how my bread progresses from week to week.

I decided to live on the edge yesterday and make the Tartine Polenta bread.  I used some leftover pumpkin seeds from Thanksgiving, as well as thyme and chives instead of rosemary.  Next time, I’ll either add more herbs or skip them altogether.  I thought I used a generous amount but they’re barely detectable in the final loaves.

My daughter has rheumatoid/psoriatic arthritis and decided to try going gluten free to see if it would help her pain and fatigue. We have a wonderful gluten free bakery here but things are rather expensive and I found that their rolls went hard after one day. When I did some research on TFL, I came across this recipe for Gluten Free Flax Bread. When the OP said that her family couldn't tell the difference between the gluten free and the regular bread, I decided to give it a shot.

At the Health Food Store, I discovered whole Kamut/khorasan grains so I decided to sprout them and include them in a loaf. I also love the moisture I get from adding porridge flakes to my bread so that got included too as well as whole grain Kamut flour. So here is what I came up with:

Measure out 100 g of Kamut berries and spout them over two days.

Yesterday i moved one notch further on my journey through Hamelman, attempting his Vermont Sourdough with Increased Whole Grain.  Ambition got ahead of my scheduling ability: as soon as I had mixed the flour and water, I realized that i wasn't going to finish in time for my evening plans and this bread was going to be an experiment in extended fermentation.  Despite doubling the fermentation time from the recipe, the results were pretty, darn good.  If Forkish's times are far too long, are Hamelman's schedules too short?

Well somehow the photo and text did not post the first time. I will try again. I have baked a couple of bricks in a row at 80 and 82% hydration using P. Reinhart's suggested dough handling technique, which involves a gentle letter fold.

I found a different technique on youtube, (breadhitz) which does not use the fold, but trims a small scrap of dough from the side and places the scrap on top to proof. Once proofed the loaf is inverted to trimmed bits down and baked. I loved the way this loaf turned out and love the way it tastes! I have eaten most of the loaf in less than a day.

After returning from my annual pilgrimage to North Carolina and finding my kitchen devoid of fresh bread I got busy milling some fresh flour.

I wanted to use a beer in this bake and decided that fresh spelt and Kamut would go great with the Pale Ale I had in stock.  Of course some caramelized onions would also go well with this combination and some Greek Yogurt and honey rounded out the flavor profile.

I added some smoked sesame seeds and garlic sesame seeds to the top and baked it boldly.

The bread consists of freshly ground white wheat, a little bolted rye and AP with caraway seeds and a bit of honey. It doesn't have enough rye ( about 12% of the flour) to call it deli rye but that was the inspiration. It has a fairly large natural leaven preferment at 70% hydration which is also that of the final dough. Very tasty.

Stu

Chocolate and hazelnut SD

I ended up with extra lavain this week and a little tub of rye and whole wheat flour I had mixed for … something. I hate wasting food and I’d been planning a chocolate loaf for a while, but just hadn’t mustered up the courage, so I decided to give it a try.

Having some hazelnuts left over from my last couple of bakes and a slab of dark chocolate that had been sitting around in my cupboard for a long time made me think “Chocolate + hazelnuts = YUM” (we can’t all be wrong about Nutella, right?!)

Formula:

OK.  The title is mis-leading.  I actually baked an FWSY country blonde but my intention is to work my way through Hamelman.  Why did I bake the FWSY?  I wasn't able to get home from work early enough to start the Hamelman Vermont Sourdough that I planned.  My starter was ready to go, so i needed to do an overnight bulk ferment.  FWSY recipes cater to that.