First the old: An 85% whole wheat sourdough. I'm still tinkering with this formula and getting good bread, but I'm coming to realize that the way I handle the dough has more impact on the bread than my endless tinkering with the numbers (if only I could spend as much time baking as I do in front of a computer).
Some of you will remember the tale of the miner who froze to death in the Yukon, with the last BTU in his body, curled about Maude, he saved her. Maude was his sourdough starter, named after a favorite memory. I never told you his name. It's Hurcules; friends called him Herk. As his legend grew, he became known as Sourdough Herk, Maude's savior.
After seeing Glenn's posting of his weekend bake, I thought that I'd show a couple of pictures of my project. It's what I often call my "house loaf" lately though this particular loaf appears to look better than most I've turned out. Maybe it was good fortune but I like to think that I keep learning from all the information being shared here on TFL.
Well, I'm back from a lovely week at the beach with family. I surely enjoyed the week, including Glenn's fabulous pastrami and corn beef with his and my rye breads. Glenn's Tartine BCB and my SFBI miche were also appreciated.
Yesterday, I thawed dough made for pizzas 4 and 6 weeks ago and frozen. I made a couple of pies, one with each of the doughs made with Maggie Glezer's and Jeff Verasano's recipes.
Pizza using Maggie Glezer's dough
Hello. I'm new to the Fresh Loaf, but have been baking breads for about 4 years now (more frequently in the past two). I've been making sourdough breads for about a year, and they're edible, but they spread everywhere. I'm talking about regular plain sourdough---whole wheat, or all white bleached flour, or a mix of the two.
Pita-bread with Zaatar (middle-east spice), sesame and olive oil
Sometimes you have to back up to move forward. I have tried to make 100% whole durum bread a couple times and couldn't achieve a good density or crumb structure even if I was happy with other things. I found myself decidedly confused by the durum - did it want a long ferment so that the dough could develop without a lot of manipulation, or did it need a short ferment because it develops much faster than regular wheat doughs? I decided to back up in the percent of durum and then move forward stepwise to see what I could learn. &n
Bake bread.
Debra Wink, God bless her, is helping me recover from the loss of my seed starter. In the meantime, because we're out of sourdough loaves--the freezer, at this moment, only holds two baguettes, and some hamburger size soft baps--I've baked my favorite sourdough 10/45/45 Rye/Bread Flour/AP Flour, 68% Hydration converted to a 12 hour sponge, with commercial yeast prefermenting 20% of the formula's flour. I'm not giving up on sourdough, but I have to say, "This bread is tasty!"
