Blog posts

Dear TFL'ers

I'm on an obligatory pause from baking, as i've underwent a spinal fusion Surgery in my lower back. Can't bake nothing now, nor bend forward... It is a dead pause for 3 months at least!  I'm bound to this dreadful back brace, so the only bread related activity i'll do is watch TFL, and learn more, take it easy, and enjoy some time in some personal reflection (remembering how vulnerable we are as humans, and that without God's mercy and grace, we are helpless).

After the difficult and tedious Not So Stollen bake earlier in the week, we decide to continue our Thanksgiving bake list with something much simpler, less stressful even if not as enjoyable.

I have been for the last couple of weeks using a nearly pure rye sourdough starter and have baked nothing but the New York Deli recipe from P. Reinhart's BBA.  I love the addition of the fried onions.  So far I have added the onions to the final dough and at some pont I will try adding them to the starter to see if it makes a difference.  For my last bake, I reduced the fried onion and added garlic to cook lightly, but not brown.  With the heat off, I added the caraway seed and fresh rosemary.

This So Not Stollen is based on a modification to a real Dresden Christmas Stollen recipe that was posted by nellapower here:  Refer to it for most of the method with a few exceptions below.

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/25407/dresden-christmas-stollen

New Breads from Old Favourite Flours

In the beginning of the fall, I took my boys with me on a small trip to Vääksyn mylly, a small mill at about 150 kilometers from where I live. It's the mill of choice of Viipurilainen kotileipomo, the family run bakery I visited earlier this year (and featured in issue 2 of my magazine, Bread), and the owner of the mill is my friend on Facebook. 

I've been baking slight variations on this 2 kg miche weekly for a month or so and it's time to share.  It's very good.  So good that it's keeping me from moving on to my endless backlog of must-try formulae from books and TFL blogs. 

As those of you who have made San Joaquin Sourdough know, my procedure calls for a 21 hour cold retardation during bulk fermentation. The length of the cold retardation was taken from Anis Bouabsa via Jane Benoit (janedo on TFL). While I have often increased or decreased the 21 hours by 3 hours or so, I have been wary of a much longer time, because I feared proteolysis would result in unacceptable gluten degradation.