Blog posts

Yesterday I shared my recipe for Bronx bagels. I also make bialys, which might make me one of the last 4 or 5 bialy bakers left.  For some reason bialys never became as popular as bagels. One reason might be that they get very stale and hard quickly. If not frozen and then toasted, it's like eating a hockey puck. The process is less complicated than that for bagels. Making bialys is like making cocktail size pizzas. The onion "schmear" prevents the entire piece of dough from rising.

   This is a pretty simple bread using a starter with some rye and bread flour.  The main dough includes freshly ground Whole Wheat, Spelt, Kamut, Rye and KAF Bread flour.

I added some cherry balsamic vinegar and walnut oil for some added depth and it did just the trick.

The final dough had a nice crust and crumb that was not too open but just right for this amount of whole grains.  The taste was excellent and made some real tasty sandwiches.

5/14/14.  I am a novice bread baker.  Made "Rustic Bread" (recipe on this site) today.  Tastes good.  Beautiful holes in crumb.  But need advice on two issues:

1.  Following the formula, the dough was VERY wet, sticky.  I could not shape it well.  .  Would not hold boule shape before baking.  Flattened out before baking.  Did not flatten out more once in the oven.  If I addressed this problem by adding more flour doesn't that make it more difficult for the crumb to form large holes?  

 Dough rose too fast after I sandwiched the three layers together, so I couldn't manhandle it into ropes as planned. Instead just twisted the strips around and tied them up as gently as I could so as not to deflate them too much. Came out looking quite strange but surprisingly edible nonetheless. 

 SD Sweet Potato Spinach Nyetzel Rollz

I used Reinhart's recipe from BBA with some deviations ...

- I made a 1/2 batch

- I used sourdough levain with about 1g of commercial yeast as leavening

- 4 day fermentation in the refrigerator

- Slightly heavier bagels at 6.75 oz/bagel instead of 4 oz/bagel

Hi all back to posting after a long hiatus. Inspired by the numerous Tartine 3 breads that have been popping up over thefreshloaf and reminded by a post that is filed under my to-bake list, I decided to make a Polenta Pepita Sourdough over the weekend. 

I adapted the Hamelman recipe below, as I really wanted to make a multi-grain bread with a soaker. I didn't have any bulghur, so I used cous cous instead. I continue to go for the bold crust, so I allow a little extra time on the bake.

It is just so much fun getting that soaker going, isn't it?