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My father, Norman Horwitz, was a renaissance man. He was a medical nuclear physicist, at the forefront of the fight against cancer. Outside of work, Norm was an inventor and trendsetter. Among his passions were cooking and baking. From an early age I would find issues of Gourmet magazine around his reading chair. At the end of a year or so, my Dad had the issues bound at a book bindery. I remember how tempting those fat volumes were, sitting so properly on their shelf in his library. I loved to look through the glossy pages of these precious volumes.

Mon Oct 21, 2019.  

I've previously done 40% Kamut, then 33% Kamut, now this is 25% Kamut in relation to Prairie Gold (HWSW), in hopes of better gluten development.  Kamut has more protein, and can be used for 100% loaves, but it's like durum, it's not going to easily be a fluffy yeasted loaf.

525 g Prairie Gold hard white spring wheat (HWSW), home-milled, coarse.

175 g Kamut, home-milled, coarse.

I found a package with Emmer flour in the larder that I had totally forgotten about so my weekly bake for friends consisted of 25% Emmer with the rest Marriages Strong White as I had not baked with this flour for a long time and did not want to go wild too quickly....and risk the friends ending up with disaster loaves...ha, ha....

I sadly could not cut into them and then used the same approach for another bake two days later that I almost forgot to cut into but managed to take a photo before it was all gone...

This was another loaf inspired by Sarah Owens, but again I swapped out the add-ins and the flours used. I like Danni's idea of using cranberries and nuts so I used those instead of the herbs suggested by Sarah Owens. Delicious loaf! 

This was my take on the roasted butternut squash sourdough by Sarah Owens, but I decided to sub out the flours and make a savory version by replacing cherries with sunflower and pumpkin seeds. The hydration was only 55% before the squash and this was definitely the most disappointing crumb I have had in the last few months, but I hope it makes a decent sandwich bread. Maybe I should have developed the dough more in the mixing stage? 

I found photos of the beautiful flat breads that they bake in Uzbekistan on a travel blog and headed to my kitchen. The bread stamps that they use, called chekich, is not available here, so I spent an afternoon in the garage making my own. It is a soft fluffy bread that contains yogurt. According to their tradition the bread should be torn by hand and not sliced. Quick and easy to make and eat.

Chekich production in progress in our garage.

Hi I am new to this site and a newbie at baking bread.  I am trying to create a starter and the method I am using is from here.

I am up to day three and my starter has NOT risen.  Is there such a thing as a dead starter and can one revive same say with a few grains of yeast or apple cider vinegar to lower the ph.

OR AM I,  just impatient?  The temperature in my kitchen is between 70 and 75 F.

Can someone guide me in the right direction please.

Thanks GregT

Just saw a reference to a sourdough podcast from one of the newspapers I subscribe to.

I've not listened to it, so I can't give an opinion to the pod casts.

From a quick scan of the web site, the content looks to be quite good though.

https://www.thesourdoughpodcast.com

Sleeping Giant Brewery is one of our very successful local breweries. So when it turned out that the stout I used in this recipe last April, was no longer available, it was a no brainer to support our local brewery. Hopefully, this tastes as good as the last time!

Recipe

Makes 3 loaves

Soaker

180 g oats

200 g stout beer (Sleeping Giant Skull Rock Stout)

Dough

720 g Unbleached flour 

200 g freshly milled Selkirk wheat flour (200 g Selkirk wheat berries)

The big lesson I learned here was that it just takes autolyse time for coarse ground home-milled whole wheat to absorb the water  and make gluten.

I let the 440 g of hard white  spring wheat, 220 g of Kamut, and 25 g coarse ground millet, autolyse for 3 hours. About 86% hydration. It was still a bit like wet sand after 3 hours.

Then folded in the 141 g of 100% hydration levain, but not salt.

Let sit 30 minutes, then one set of stretch and folds.