Blog posts

The Ultimate Fast Sourdough by Jim Lahey

I haven't baked a white loaf since my disastrous encounter with Leckford Estate bread flour, so I thought it was time to excise some demons and have another try - with a different flour!

Having had success with a bulk retard in my last bake A Trio of High Extraction Loaves I decided to use the same technique again.

My first "bagel-crust" squares were a hit; a tad softer and fluffier but with all the loved characteristics of a bagel. We loved them so much that I decided to make them again with a different variation. Ian (isand66) always reminds me of the seeds and other bagel toppings in my past bagel bakes so I made this one with his suggestions in my mind.

Isn't it funny how goals change depending on where you are on your journey?

Firstly, Open crumb as a keen and quite naive beginner in October was top of the list...quickly followed by 'scoring'...oh those elusive ears in my overproofed loaves in the warm fridge phase...

Then, a new oven and a new wine cooler...everything changes again!!!!!

So, now with things being a bit 'settled' I aim to have a number of formulas that I know so well that I can 'read the dough' and get a  sort of reliable 'good' result... I seem to be getting there with the Champlain....

A few weeks ago, someone posted about a rye bread, and David Snyder referenced a recipe for Hansjoakim's 70% Sourdough Rye.  Having dabbled a bit with whole rye flour (as in Field Blend #2 from FWSY), but never having plunged deeply into that area, I decided to give it a go. Especially because the recipe sounded relatively simple and straightforward.

If you are looking for a bread with a nice rye flavor and texture, try this one.  Thanks, David!

I take photos with my phone. The Fresh Loaf upload procedure is too slow for me. I want to test out posting an image hosted from a different website.

If this works properly, you should see some pizzas we baked tonight.

 I have setup a granite slab to bake some baggies up to 12" long. Following Alfonso's setup, this one seems to work quite well. My oven has no bottom heating element, so I have to flip the baggies to color their bottoms. No big deal, and some initial poolish baggies yield seen below. Yep, they look more like batards, but tasted great.

My poor little oven is dying a slow death. It no longer gets above 500f - this bake took 25 minutes - a good bake for long baguettes should be 20 max preferably 18. Result, disappointing pop, but fortunately decent structure on the inside. Dark on the bottom and thicker tougher crust. This mix was rather low and slow on yeast getting about 1.5 volume overnight on cold retard had these puppies been given a bit more kick i am sure they'd be fantastic ... Quelle dommage !

I set myself the target whether I can produce a really good example of a 'Fool's crumb' with all the

features that Trevor describes in his book.

Not really - I tried an experiment with Champlains to use extended cold bulk fermentation in my wine cooler overnight, shape in the morning and totally misjudged the 2nd proof!

But, rather than only share the good, here you also get the 'ugly' and this might be useful for someone learning. Certainly when I started off, I did not know what underproofed loaves looked in comparism to overproofed etc.

Hello friends - 

This weekend, I revisited my seeded SD. The recipe is very similar to the last version except:

• I changed the seed blend a bit, added some pumpkin seeds and upped the total amount of seeds from 19% to 23% and
• I adjusted the flour blend, less white (79% is now 71%), more whole wheat (19% is now 24%) and more rye (2% is now 5%). 

Formula: