Blog posts

Loaf 1 - 100% wholewheat, 450g
90% hydration
30% starter
2% salt

Long overnight autolyse in fridge.
Also proofed overnight in fridge and baked in the morning.
Baked at ~230c for 20 mins covered & 20 mins uncovered

This worked out well - a beautiful colour and tasted great. Alas, needed more time in the oven, and the crumb wasn't as open as I would have liked. Also, I used the wrong baking paper and it stuck to the bottom!

465 g all-purpose, 390 g whole what, 50 g rye, 81% hydration, retarded bulk fermentation, short retarded proofing, 55 mins on baking stone ∴ single 1556g loaf

I had another go at this bake, but made a few mistakes right at the start.  Rather than using the recommended 214 g of bread flour and 109 g of water for the final dough, I accidentally use 321 g bread flour and 243 g of water which I reduced to 236 from the total formula column, yikes.  Other changes I made include reducing the soaker water to 150 g.

This is another twist on Hamelman’s 5 grain levain. I am using the same amounts as my last attempt at this but once again, I tweaked the method and I did not sift out the bran. I am also going to do some bassinage with this dough as my notes from the last time indicated that this was a stiff dough as well. 

Recipe:

Makes 3 loaves

Soaker:

100 g cracked rye berries (coarsely mill 125 g of rye berries)

86 g raw sunflower seeds

86 g old fashioned oats (large flake)

    This is the same basic formula as my last post except this time I added some cranberries and reduced the egg amount slightly.  I love the flavor of these rolls and they are worth giving them a try as I know you will not be disappointed.  Keep in mind this is a pretty wet dough and is not the easiest to form into rolls.  I used wet hands and a dough scraper to help me.  I don't like adding a lot of extra flour when shaping rolls, but you can certainly do that if you desire, just don't end up making them too dry.

Being a twin and the 2nd one born, my twin has always said I was a real 'Born Loser'.  But this year's birthday is a very special one because my birthday is on 02-02-2020 .....the same day as the Super Bowl.  It seems fitting that my Chiefs are favored to win by 2 by the bookies.  But they are oh so wrong!  I think the Chiefs will win by 20.  So I'm taking the 200 to 1 odds that they will do so and putting 20 bucks on it.  I'm getting ready to celebrate their huge 20 point win by making pizza in the toaster oven using home made tortillas.......

I have never baked a ciabatta in all the years of baking. I wanted to take some nice bread to friends for late afternoon drinks that would pair nicely with cheese and selected wines. My usual bake for these events is baguettes with a poolish, but I wanted to try something. I went with Hamelman's ciabatta with biga which is a 73% hydration loaf.

The result was better than I was expecting, The crumb is not as open as some prefer, but I don't like the holes so large that the toppings fall through. I may experiment with upping the hydration a few points to test my nerve.

Cheers,

I made one bread according to Forkish's recipe (half the amount of flour, water, etc. that is listed in the book).

Some people paint sunflowers, I bake bread- until get good at it.  I decided that in order to really understand Pain de Campagne, I had to bake them actual size. 

This loaf is built from a hundred grams of starter, 600 grams water, 1,000 g bread flour, and 20 g salt.

I think I've just made my favorite cake! My first bake for 2020!