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Hello everyone, I'm a new member. I was going through some of the blog posts and I came across a number that spoke about an article printed in The Bread Lines magazine of The Bread Bakers Guild of America. They describe a standardized calculator to make our lives easier when calculating weights and percentages of ingredients. Well I put it together and it's yours free, just follow the link in the most current blog update. I hope you find it helpful

The ear and pattern don't usually split when I use my normal flour. I've just tried T65 flour and this split happened. I reduced the hydration to 62%. Any tips for working with T65? It seems it has 10% Protein.

I needed some nice semi-soft rolls for burgers and hot dogs. These are not like those air-whipped supermarket rolls that are so soft and tasteless but are the perfect consistency to hold a juicy burger or some natural casing hot dogs.

I decided to follow my new method of taking the dough temperature, measuring the rise for bulk, and then shaping and refrigerating for at least 12 hours before baking. The dough was allowed to rise to 30% at 80 F.

I used fresh milled and sifted Butlers Gold whole wheat along with some KAF bread flour, egg yolks and butter.

80 percent Sourdough Rye with a Rye-Flour Soaker

Baked 22nd August 2024.

This is first time baking this recipe. I do not usually bake rye breads, so I did as much reading on what to expect and handle the rye as possible leading up to this attempt. I stone-milled the rye berries the day before so they would be as fresh as possible and have an abundance of microbes. My firm whole-rye culture as fully active when preparing the sourdough stage overnight for 14 hours. The hot rye-flour soaker was prepared at the same time.

I just baked this today and I think it is my favourite pan bread that I’ve made so far.  I absolutely love the crumb, nicely open for a pan loaf.  The flavour from the toasted walnuts, toasted sesame seed oil, touch of honey and the 20% whole spelt are just fabulous.  There is a mild tang since I did not use a stiff sweet levain to suppress the acidity, but instead used a regular stiff levain.  This bread is so soft yet the crust is pretty thin and crisp.

I’m working on improving my spelt baguettes by slowly increasing the hydration 1% at a time trying not to overshoot and have a disaster LOL.  At only 9% of the total flour, whole spelt should give some good whole grain flavour while also helping the dough’s extensibility.  Also this should help achieve an open crumb which is quite desirable for baguettes.  I don’t think I’m quite there yet with this bake.  I also had some trouble releasing one of the baguettes from the couche causing some degassing.

I’m am behind on my posting here.  I baked this loaf a while back and it is already gone.  I recently found ground black sesame seeds at a local Asian market, this saves me the trouble of grinding the seeds myself.  I love adding the ground seeds to the dough as it gives the crumb a lovely grayish colour and a great black sesame flavour to the bread.  If you cannot find already ground black sesame seeds, then I would use my coffee grinder to grind the seeds.  You’ll just need to clean the grinder before and after use.

I want to pose a number of questions that I hope will stir up some discussion.  I have ideas about some of them but no real facts.  Here's the first.

I have measured the volume of a starter as it rose after feeding.  I've done this several times with various starters and a poolish. The general pattern was the same.  The starter would, after a delay, start rising and build up to a roughly constant rate, then start to taper off.

Today's bake: Laminated Honey Rye

Source: Living Bread by Daniel Leader

Notes: Doubled original recipe of TDW 1.055kg.

Substitutions:  AP flour for Type 55, Used plant-based butter.