Blog posts

This is my first loaf bake in six months. I have been making small flatbreads in the meantime.

I milled seven pounds of flour on Friday the 11th -- 3 pounds of Prairie Gold hard white spring wheat, 2 pounds of Kamut, and 2 pounds of hard red winter wheat.

The goal here was to re-do the previous bake, #19: http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/62664/19th-bake-3202020-18-tsp-instant-yeast

with a longer autolyse, and a shorter ferment. 

Issue

My liquid white flour starter gets gradually weaker over time, although was created from rye flour. My regimen was to feed my culture a couple of times a week and refrigerate after the starter had ripened on the bench. The culture is 125% hydration and is fed with white bread flour.

The culture was initially strong with good rising power. After about three weeks it becomes weak and has a reduced ability to give a good rise and volume to the loaves. I have to occasionally freshen the starter with stone-ground rye to return its vitality and power.

Well I couldn’t resist because I love kamut & durum bread. I often add spelt but not this time. And obviously not a baguette

I made sure my starter was really active before I started. 
Bread flour 62.2%
kamut flour 40%
durum 7.8% (all I had left)

water 80%
salt 1,8%

This is Cedar Mountain’s Grass bread with a few minor tweaks. The last time I made this, my notes has several comments about how wet this dough was so I cut the water back by 25 g and the yogurt by 10. Initially the dough seemed pretty stiff but it loosened up when I added the add-ins and as it fermented. I was also careful to cook the porridge until it was very thick. This time I ended up with a beautiful elastic dough. It resulted in nice well sprung loaves. 

Recipe

Makes 3 loaves. 

Add-ins

In recent times I have been baking exclusively with durum wheat and the results have got progressively better with each bake. I wanted to explore the typical traditional process whereby an old-dough technique is employed although in real terms I applied the method in my own way.

Continuous old-dough process:

Old-dough (sourdough) (60% hydration and 2% salt).
refreshed 1:1 (old-dough:flour) + enough water to make a firm dough.

Make bread using refreshed old dough at 20%, reserve a piece.

I’ve wanted to make a mashed potato bread for some time and just got around to it.  This has 25% butter mashed potatoes, 82% hydration, 9% prefermented flour.  I did an overnight levain build which grew to over 3x and was used young just as the dome started to flatten.  A saltolyse was done also overnight, both starting in the fridge to slow things down.  The mashed potatoes were added to half the dough after Rubaud mixing when the levain was added.  Then was fully mixed with slap and folds on the counter.

Last week I posted about Abel's Semolina with pistachios, and I wasn't all A-Ok with my results, so back to the drawing board for me.  MTloaf correctly pointed out that I had miscalculated the overall hydration at 70%, rather than the 75% it would seem to be.  The correction to the formula sheet was made.  

I'd like to know the difference between a Portuguese roll in a Kaiser roll and when I said Portuguese roll I mean the hotter darker thicker type bread compared to the white lighter Kaiser roll type read in a town in in in a town called Hoboken New Jersey there is a bakery called Dominick's bakery they have the greatest bread you'll ever taste in the world but they don't make like Kaiser  type rolls than a soft and light they make like thicker darker heavier roles that are just fantastic I think it's it's like a Portuguese roll but they also make them long and a Portuguese rolls.