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Well today I made a simple 1:2:3 loaf with some wholewheat (17%) and spelt (8%). my objective - test baking in my new BBQ instead of in the oven over summer.  Just a standard 123 with a little extra water, 4 sets of coil folds.

here is my set up

I'm a professional baker, recently moved to Thimphu, Bhutan. Used to achieve perfect croissants with beautiful honeycomb back in Mumbai, but despite multiple attempts, I'm just not getting the same results over here. Below is a full breakdown of my recipe and method, please tell me where I'm going wrong.

Bread flour (White Swan brand) 1000g

Sugar 110g

Yeast (Instant dry) 15g

Gluten 12g

Bread improver 15g

Salt 20g

Honey 15g

Butter 200g

Water 440-450g (depending on humidity and dough consistency)

I made this before using Eric's instructions here: https://breadtopia.com/couronne-bread-ring/

Today I used a recipe and method according to Eric Kayser. I think it's this book  (The Larousse Book of Bread ). The method is somewhat different but the result nonetheless appealing.

Tom

  I made a similar version of this bread a while ago and it came out great.  I wanted to change up the flour a bit and swapped out the whole wheat in the original formula with Kamut and some potato flour.

I also used Greek yogurt instead of the original ricotta cheese.

I was very happy with the end result on this one.  It's one of the tastiest challah breads you will ever eat.

It’s time to bake Xmas loaves for my group but this year, I decided to bake only one kind and since wild rice with cranberries seems to be the most popular, this was it! This is the same recipe as here: http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/61462/wild-rice-sourdough-cranberries%C2%A0

However, for some reason the dough was moving super slowly so I gave it an extra coil fold and let it rise until it hit the 30% increase mark. 

Got some lovely oven spring and good crumb with this 80% sprouted whole spelt loaf (70% hydration). Very pleased how this turned out. I mixed the dough up around 6:30 pm -- no complicated process, I mixed everything together all at once. Let it rest for about an hour, then performed four stretch and folds in the bowl every half hour over the next two hours.

Goals: 90% whole grain, 1 kg of dough,  88% hydration, 1.9% salt, 10% pre-fermented flour.

Nov 28, 2019.

6:05pm, intitial mix:  363 g home milled Prairie Gold HWSW, 65 g home milled Kamut, 50 g King Arthur unbleached all-purpose flour 11.7% protein, (478 g flour so far), 394 g water, 15 g vital wheat gluten, 1/8th tablet of 500 mg vitamin C.

(Just now noticed that I did not include the VWG in the total flour.)

I started out to make Ru's seeded sourdough which I love.  I ran out of levain (didn't calculate properly) so added in the left over from the first refreshment of the refrigerated starter.  I am not sure how much water I added to it to thin it from 66% hydration - a dumb move as it was quite thin when I used it. 

12 midday - toasted 15 g chia seed, 37 g sesame seed and 22 g flaxseed. I had blitzed sesame and flaxseed a little in the coffee grinder. I then added 55 g water but it sucked it all up so I added another 55 g water and left to soak.

After my last attempt I decided to reduce the autolyse time and see if it helped.  I made 2 x 600gm loaves - one had 1 hour autolyse, the other had 2 hour autolyse.  I withheld 20 gms water in both and found this made a huge difference.  I did 100 SLAFs, rested 5 minutes then added salt and did another 100 SLAFs.  

I bought a boatload of spelt berries and have been using them bit by bit in all of my bakes, but I decided to try a loaf that was 45%+ whole grain using 25% spelt, hard red winter wheat (Redeemer) and rye. I tried the Full Proof Baking method of making two separate doughs, one whole grain and one white, and then laminating them together. I also divided the dough into 2 loaves during the lamination stage, which Full Proof Baking recommends. I've always divided during the shaping stage.