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I decided to offer the formula of my last bake another chance as the bread tasted too good to abandon. To solve the spreading issue, the hydration is dropped from 88% to 83%. This produced a much more manageable dough. In the hope of preserving the fragile gluten, I also added a 15 minutes autolyse and reduced the round of stretch and fold from two to one only. 

This time it wasn’t just Kamut but 6 different grains that added up to 10% of the grains in this bread but there were other differences ….nearly too many to mention.   Well not too many.  The 6 grains were rye, spelt, oat, red and white wheat plus Kamut.

THis is my recipe for this loaf:

100g bread flour leaven 100% hydration

400g bread flour and 280g water autolyzed for 8 hours

Added mixture of 40g WW, 30g Dark Rye, 30g Spelt , 60g water, 1T dry malt

Multigrain mixture and leaven added to autolyzed mixture

4.5hr bulk fermentation folding 2x 30m and 45m every hour

3.5hr proofing 28C rm temp

BAked 250C in dutch oven 25m and without top 220C for 25m

Before you turn away, please allow me explain why I’m posting this poor-looking bread. There’s no doubt that it had poor rise, yet it’s also true that its flavour is so exceptional it deserves to be shared.

Hi bakers,

few days ago I posted a khorasan loaf and I wasn't totally happy because of the lack of spring!

Today I tried again with the exact same recipe and I am proud to say that I now have a ear :)

The spring isn't the biggest but, since khorasan is not a very strong flour (as some of you pointed out), I am happy with it.

The crumb is good and I think that the aromas and flavors of khorasan can compensate this lack of spring, I'. in love with its chamomile taste and smell and with its mildly yellow color.

No. You didn’t read it wrong.

This is an update on the small amount starter experiment. I followed Dab's suggestion to drop the starter amount to 1 g and reduce the amount of fermented flour in the levain. 

The levain was built using 1g starter, 10 g bread flour and 10 g water. Left to mature on the counter at 30C for about 8 hours. The final dough was comprised of 220 g total flour (including levain's flour) and 75% hydration. I used a similar flour mix as in the first experiment: 50% bread flour and the rest a mix of white spelt, rye and ruchmehl (half-half whole wheat). 

I haven’t made Baguettes in over a year and I’m pretty rusty although I’ve never been as consistent or practiced as the master. I used the “36 hour + Baguettes” recipe by txfarmer, but I reduced the hydration to 72% which was too dry in retrospect, but easier to handle when out of practice. I used Central Milling Type 70 malted flour which gives excellent flavor.

So I’ve always wondered of different brands of flours actually made a difference, and from researching the internet, the answer seemed obvious... yeah. Especially KA flour, which seems to have an extremely loyal group of followers. But rather than just taking their word for it, I wanted to put it to the test. So I made 2 loaves of the same bread, but one with KA bread flour, one with cheap, store brand bread flour. 

I was able to get the store brand bread flour on sale for only $1 (score!), while KA bread flour was about $5 a bag.

I’ve been making Trevor’s Champlain sourdough a lot recently and have made progress but the open crumb still eludes me. This is last weekend’s bake and I’m pretty happy with it.  I increased the hydration by 2% and that helped. But I’m nowhere near “volcanic crumb”. Very pleased with the oven spring and blisters!