Blog posts

July 30, 2022. 95th bake.

This has taken a lot practice to get to the point where

- The tops are evenly browned
- The canele itself is tall and statuesque (they easily collapse to runty dense loaves)
- The crumb is open throughout
- The crust is not too light and not too tough
- Etc etc

July 29, 2022.  94th bake.

 I

Incredible crumb . I’m using my stored YW starter not even building a levain. Can’t believe how great these are coming out. 

July 28, 2022.

Wow, it's been just over 6 months since I milled any wheat, and just under 6 months since I milled rye:

So, tonight I got out the Shule (a Chinese made edition of what was likely a German model) 3-roller hand crank mill.  I use it to crack the grain. 

July 23, 2022.  93rd bake.

240 g Bob's Red Mill stone ground whole wheat.

66 g durum semolina (the gritty stuff), Swad brand from Patel Brothers.

44 g Gold Medal bread flour.

3.0 g table salt.

3.0 g Morton Lite Salt.

1 tsp Fleischmann instant dry yeast.

261 + 8 + 9 + 8 + 10 = 296 g bottled spring water.

Mixed, rested, kneaded a little, stretch and folds, kneaded.  I didn't keep track of time.  

I've made this a few times in the past and it's always been a light and fluffy loaf. Which in all honesty this should have been but instead I made the super dense anadama BRICK!  Basically instead of taking the recipe and dividing or scaling it properly I made it up and tossed it into my Pullman pan. Let it finish it's prove (which was enough to press on the lid) and baked it off. In hindsight it was probably too much dough and would have been better with less to get more of that fluffy result....but even as a dense bread it's delicious. 

     I wanted to make some soft tasty rolls that I could use for burgers and sandwiches.

This one uses cream cheese and baked potatoes to soften the crum and a mix of freshly ground whole wheat, spelt and corn flour along with some KAF bread flour.

I use some everything bagel topping and some grated chedar cheese which tasted great.

The honey added a little bit of sweetness which in the end turned out a nice soft tasty roll perfect for just about anything.

(This is a tangent to other low-salt discussions on TFL.

I came to Morton Lite Salt via Vitalyte, which used to be known as Gookinaid, and before that "E-R-G" which stood for "Electrolyte Replacement, with Glucose."

https://vitalyte.com makes a great isotonic sports drink. Nutrition info here:
https://vitalyte.com/collections/shop-vitalyte/products/fruit-punch-glucose-replacement-drink

So I mostly bake for my weekly needs which means sandwiches, toast and the like. For a long time I've been doing pan loaves because that's an easy shape to use for those things. It also let me not worry as much about overly extensible doughs with lots of spelt, etc when I was learning to work with those.