Blog posts

One of my recent efforts, using a refreshed wheat starter based on pineaple juice. The loaf reasonably tasty and crusty - I wished for more air bubbles but perhaps the amount of seeds makes the dough heavier? Either that, or it should have had higher hydration, but it was damn sticky already and not that easy to work with!

Here's how, and below the result.

Tonight I experimented with Russian bread "Stolichny". It was baked with liquid levain. It is the GOST-bread. (GOST (Russian: ГОСТ) refers to a set of technical standards maintained by the a regional standards organization in USSR). 

Levain for this bread needs 3-phase refreshing. On the first two refreshings I added a little bit of barley flour (it will be about 10% of all flour). 

what is too hot for a starter to be kept at if not in the fridge, it gets hot here I can keep in cupboard but still will be 30C plus some days unless we have the aircon on

Meet Park Tae Young, my persimmon yeast water!

After sourdough, I promised myself I will try yeast water. Although it took many months, here she is finally. Ready to raise breads with a different character. I documented another journey of my baking life so I hope you enjoy.

Many TFLers here have used yeast water and posted their beautiful breads made with it. It's really an old thing here and when I read it before I really wanted to try it. I waited so many years before giving it a try, I'm lucky because many have formalized the yeast water method by that time.

           I wanted to bake a nice soft and flavorful bread but one with some healthy grains as well.  In went a soaker left for 24 hours in hot water comprised of grits, rolled oats and barley flakes.  I also added some left-over mashed potatoes and some grilled onions.

Finally bought an Emile Henry baguette baker... 1 year twice daily fed sourdough stater (785 g), 245 g H20, 545 g bread flour, 17 g salt... rise at room temp... and viola! 

This was a special Halloween.  It has been years since our daughter was home for one.  The last time she was here we carved a Chi Oh Owl Pumpkin.  This time we put Lucy on Pumpkin.  It scared the heck out of her too!

Wow, it's been a while!
It's like my annual visit or what, ha ha.

So, it's Halloween and I am totally having fun with Jack every year!! 

above photo: pumpkin dinner roles with chocolate custard cream in his mouth! ^ ^
and below: my standard, pumpkin fougasse as jack, black sesame fougasse as spider net, and some pumpkin cream twist role!!

The latest in my rye series is a Hamelman 70% medium rye with 30% WW, and a sizable pumpernickel soaker.  My cracked rye was bug infested (doesn't move very quickly at the only bulk store that carries it); the pumpernickel was coarse.  San Francisco Bay Area folks, if you know of a local source, please let me know.

This is a "do nothing" bread introduced from facebook's perfect sourdough group, where apart from mixing (could help myself from playing with wet dough so i did 2 folds at 1 hour interval) and 1 fold and loosely shaping, nothing else is needed. I was intrigued so i try tried a small batch of dough to make ciabatta. 90% hydration. 2 hours bulk at RT and 15 hours bulk in the fridge. loosely shaped n baked with steam for 15 mins.

Easy enough and i got a monsters inc ciabatta. Happy halloween!