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My husband isn’t a big sourdough fan, so I will occasionally fiddle around with ways to minimize the acidity in our bread. Recently, I was thumbing through the second edition of Hamelman's Bread and was intrigued by his introduction to the formula for Swiss Farm Bread, in which he notes a lack of acidity. I decided to give it a try. 

This bread was made using the quick ciabatta recipe here on the site, link below.

I made two changes. #1 I replaced 100g of bread flour with First Clear to get closer to the french flours. #2 as soon as the dough was pulling away from the mixing bowl, I put it into a well-oiled covered bowl and placed it in the fridge.

Left it there for about 16 hours before putting it on my kitchen table and letting it warm up and triple in the next 2 or three hours.

Here is the link to the original recipe:

I needed to make some nice soft buns for sandwiches and hopefully burgers if it ever stops raining.  I’ve made a version of these several times and they never fail to disappoint.

I really love the grains I’ve been getting from Barton Spring Mills and replaced the rye in the original formula with Rouge de Bordeaux freshly ground Whole Wheat.  I’ve been doing 2 passes through my Mockmill 200 sifting with a #30 and then a #40 to get a real fine whole wheat flour.

My old trusty recipe with tiny modification

7 am

Preferment 

160g old starter

160g warm water

160g rye flour

Mix , cover and place in a warm place (I put it in the oven alongside a pot of very hot water or leave the oven light on) 

Scald, 7 am

80g rye flour 

240ml boiling water

1 tbsp ground coriander 

Mix until smooth, wait until no longer hot but stil very warm,  add 1 tbsp rye flour,  mix in, cover, place in the same spot as the preferment

3 pm

I used 500g Prairie Gold whole wheat flour and, initially, 400g water, 4 g yeast and 10g salt. After autolyse decided to gently and gradually add 100g more. 

People made very good bread for a long time before they added Vitamin C to their flour.

I do think the effect of Vitamin C is detectable to a careful hand baker. However, hand bakers can easily compensate by using a slightly wetter dough or longer fermentation times.

At this point, I think Vitamin C is added for professional bakers using mechanical dough mixing and handling equipment on a tight production schedule.  

This was an experiment to see what happens if Benny's 100% WW Hokkaido is done without dairy. The method was fairly faithful to the original recipe with a direct substitution of 'plant butter' for the butter and commercial almond milk in place of milk, even in the tangzhong.

Edited to add : I think my bread is trying to tell me something!!! Huge!!!  Unprecedented! Amazing! Ok enough. No egg wash. I can’t tolerate the smell after having Covid 😩😬. Fragrance and powerful growth . Same flour as I brought it with me as well as the YW so everything is the same. Will bake it probably one more time in 2 weeks. Keep ya posted. 

I recently read and enjoyed Tartine Bread by Chad Robertson. I was pleasantly surprised as I was reading it that my method of baking sourdough is very similar to the process outlined in the book. With that in mind I figured it would be easy to pick up any of the recipes in the book and go to town with some very mild adjustments or experimentation. All of the variations of breads listed had my mouth watering and I was (and still am) keen to try some things beyond a standard sourdough.