Blog posts

I had some leftover 125% Levain from Hamelman’s 5 Grain Levain (or 8 grain in my case) and I didn’t want to throw it out. I figured out a quick 1-2-3 recipe but the amount came out to be too much for my batard banneton. 

So what to do? I could use my bigger round bannetons but that means that I have to dig out my larger cast iron pots to bake the loaves and just didn’t feel like doing that. So I thought that I’ll use a loaf pan. 

I have very little experience working with white flour. There’re two reasons why I used so much white flour in this bake. The first is to stay true to the community bake’s formula. The second is to suit the palate of most people as I’ll give this loaf away to my aunts.

25% Spelt Multi-Seeds Sourdough

recipe by Emmanuel Hadjiandreou's book.  Inspired by Abe & Carole I had a go at this yesterday whilst making my 5 grain levain for the community bake.

Starter was refreshed the day before and in the evening I built the levain - 100% hydration with some bran included and left it overnight on the bench. 

Bake day was crazy - visitors in and out and bread on the go.

Hello- My sourdough starter (KA unbleached white bread flour and water 100% hydration) is now about 3 weeks old.  It rises very well after every feeding, at least double sometimes more, but my bubbles are not real big, there are a lot of them but they are fairly small. Is that ok?  I keep the starter on the counter at room temp which fluctuates between 65-71 F

I have not baked with it yet, but plan too soon. 

I began browsing the fresh loaf mid 2009, when I was trying to learn how to bake proper bread. Over the years the suggestions, advice, support and references have taught me much about baking bread. I enjoy the breads I bake.

Perhaps the best early advice I adopted was from a poster who suggested that if you can buy your flour from your local artisan baker do so. I have done so ever since, in Canmore and now in Golden where I just bought my second bag of bread flour from our local bakery.

I have been dipping my toes into breads with added goodies recently. My favorite part of bread with goodies is biting into a slice and getting a little surprise of olives/raisins/nuts/ etc. I think it adds a nice textural variance to the bread. I haven't made a loaf with olives yet, so when I found this recipe in Hammelman's Bread and had to give it a try. The loaves are about 65% hydration, 20% olives, 10% whole wheat, and naturally leavened. I ended up making a fougasse and a batard. Please excuse the large chunk of fougasse missing here. I couldn't resist. :)

This morning I baked my version of Hamelman's 5-grain Levain. I think this is one of the best breads in Hamelman's book - it is tasty, it is easy to make, and it never fails. Needless to say, I make hardly any changes to the original recipe. Some of the details of my version are:

Hello TFLers! I've been very busy this early in 2019, I almost have no time to post and check TFL. I'm glad I had a little time to post this. I baked this early this January but I'm only posting it now because, you know, teachers have a lot of paperwork aside from actual classroom teaching.

I have been meaning to sprout some flour again and finally got around to doing it.  Boy am I glad I did!  The unique flavor from using freshly ground sprouted flour is amazing.

I made 1 big loaf and about 5 rolls which I ended up eating in 2 days ?.  I do have to say the rolls were probably some of the best ones I have made to date.  The combo of rice, potatoes and sprouted flour made them nice and soft and full of so much flavor.  I am going to make another batch of just rolls next time and freeze them for later use so I don't eat all of them right away!