Blog posts

Normally the loaves I record here are the successful one.  There are plenty of so-so loaves that don't offer too much to dwell on worth writing about.  And then there are the total disaster loaves.

I have not been very active here in many years, posting only occasionally in reply to member questions, and even more rarely to my own blog.  Perhaps so much so that I may even appear to only talk the talk.  I decided today that I should, if not change that, at least speak into the silence a little bit.  So, I will tell you of  my latest bake.

Hello, friends.

My new rye sour is taking to the rye flour like a horse to water in the desert! This means a "New York" Jewish Sour Rye bake no later than tomorrow. The formula I selected comes after a visit to my Pisani  (Villager) Island 66 blog page. From there I was directed right back here. I landed at everybody's friend, and a fine baker David Snyder's blog. 

For this exercise (performance) I will attempt David Snyder's, Jewish Sour Rye. Which is based on Greenstein's formula. Boy that was a lot of acknowledgements! 

Onwards.

Earlier this year, Tony (CalBeachBaker) posted a bread made with einkorn flour.  I modified the recipe a tad, and this is my second attempt (these bakes were my first experience with einkorn).

For the levain, I mixed 3 grams of sourdough starter, 72 grams of einkorn flour, and 54 grams of water.  There is a soaker, and for that I mixed 48 grams of rye chops, 48 grams of sesame seeds, 120 grams of boiling water, and 2 grams of salt.  The levain and soaker sat overnight covered at room temperature.

   I made the same bread about a year ago to bring to my Cousin’s house for the Jewish New Year.  It was a big hit and I really liked the malty flavor the Guinness imparts on the overall bread.  It doesn’t taste like beer but you can definitely taste the underlying flavor.  I don’t really like beer that much and I definitely would not be caught dead drinking a motor oil type beer like Guinness but it’s my favorite one to add to bread.

A double build was used for the levain but you could easily just do one build if you desire.

Hi all,

I need to know how to calculate flour and water weight, based on total dough weight.

if I need to mix up 1 kg of dough @ 65% hydration, how do I get there.  At this point I just guess, do the math and adjust my numbers until I get there.  Not efficient at all 🥴

Thank you!

One of my favorite wheat to use is Durum which I usually mill myself but since I was out of Durum berries I used some packaged Italian flour my wife had purchased for my pizza making, Semola Rimacinata Durum which is a very fine milled flour.

I’ve tried adding an egg to my standard country sourdough but hadn’t tried adding one to a 100% whole wheat sourdough.  Given the benefits of an egg in bread, leavening, lightness of crumb, fluffiness and thin crisp crust, a bread that is 100% whole wheat should theoretically greatly benefit from the addition of an egg.  

Gary posted a little while ago about using potato flakes instead of the usual flour based tangzhong.  Although potato flakes are more expensive than flour per gram, at least the good quality ones without additives they have one advantage.  Because the flakes are prepared from cooked potatoes, the starches are already gelatinized.  Apparently even through drying to make the flakes, although the water is gone from the starches, they retain whatever change that occurred so you do not need to precook the flakes to use them.