Blog posts

So with the success of my first vinegar a rose wine vinegar I decided I’d try making a fruit vinegar.  Raspberries were on sale recently and raspberry vinaigrettes are delicious so that made my decision easy.  Because I recently refreshed my 1.5 year old grape yeast water I decided I’d speed the first fermentation up by inoculating the raspberries with some about 2 tbsp of the grape yeast water.  So into a jar went the two containers of raspberries.  In a ratio of 500 g of fruit to 66 g of sugar, added sugar and enough water to cover the fruit.

launchpad pre-bake-off systems (ingredient) check off.

Faiccos Italian specialties (Bleecker street Greenwich Village) homemade sweet & hot Sopresatta

Imported sharp Provolone

Imported Sicilian Caciocavallo

No name low moisture mozzarella, I saw some sandwich-ready slices of the mozzarella on the counter. I asked, Boars head? He replied, no. I asked for a pound. He came out with an unmarked loaf about 2/3 the size of a Grande loaf of whole milk. Don't you know, with my big mouth was embarrassed to ask the brand! Grrr.

Saw the making of this bread on a tv culture special. Had never seen this technique before.  The dough is very wet and turned out onto a heavily floured bench after a rest from final mixer mixing.  (Any mixer can handle this white rye goo.) With heavily floured hands, the dough is portioned, pulled from the mass and shapped into balls or floured globs and rested on a floured tray with plenty of spacing.  Then after a rest, dough is geschüttelt or shaken until it flattens out into a large, for want of word, cracker resembling a pizza slipping and sliding across the peel.

Was inspired by Martadella's recent rye breads, and the somewhat recent community bake to make bread similar to the Danish rugbrod. I was short on rye, so I did include some whole wheat. Must try this again when I replenish my stock of rye.

Ingredients:

300 gr whole rye flour

150 gr whole wheat flour

150 gr last night's belgian beer (completely flat and most of the alcohol had evaporated)

200 gr water

80 gr 100% hydration rye starter (recently refreshed)

70 gr old ww bread, soaked with an unknown amount of water and then wrung out

I’ve had orange poppyseed in the back of my mind for quite some time and finally got around to trying it in this 100% whole stoneground spelt sourdough bread.

Whole stoneground spelt 453 g sifted yielding
47 g of bran scalded with 94 g of boiling water and left overnight in the fridge.
VWG 23.55 g
Water 341 g water and 15 g for bassinage
Salt 10.47 g
50 g of poppyseeds
Zest of 1 small-med orange

Overnight levain
16 g starter + 16 g brown sugar + 25 g water + 47 g whole spelt

BACKGROUND

Oh how I wanted these to be good. The ingredient list was simple. The process looked simple. I even found Graham Flour at a specialty baking shop. However, the fact that the book didn't include a picture of the finished product should have been my very first clue. 

INGREDIENTS AND CALCULATION HERE

I am running very low on safe AP flour, so I did this one kinda? whole grain.  I probably could have used less AP, but I was afraid it would be too dense. In hindsight I could have used more freshly milled grains.

Levain build: (4 hours before mixing)

10g NMNF rye starter

40g fresh milled hard red wheat

40g water

I am running very low on safe AP flour, so I did this one kinda? whole grain.  I probably could have used less AP, but I was afraid it would be too dense. In hindsight I could have used more freshly milled grains.

Levain build: (4 hours before mixing)

10g NMNF rye starter

40g fresh milled hard red wheat

40g water

This is the same as in previous post but I tortured myself with using devices, like scale and even the thermometer 😀 Oh, dear .... 

It can be done without any commercial yeast,  but I prefer it this way. More practical  and richer taste (yup, that's true) 

There we go:

Day one, stiff starter:

240g dark rye flour

20g rye starter, unrefrehed

Enough water to make rather dense, but not to dry dough (140g)

Fermentation at 26-28°C for a few hours, then at rt for a total of 16-24 hours (I did 22 total, rt was 18°C)