Blog posts

At the bread tasting a couple of weeks ago, I made a series of six sourdoughs that all had the same formula and technique, with the exception of 25% of the flour being different. One of the popular ones was made with 25% Kamut flour. I was a little surprised that the Kamut seemed quite thirsty and also very strong. The dough seemed drier and much tighter than the doughs made with other flours. But the resulting bread was nice.

Double hydration mix with 75% hydration mixed flour levain and 100 % hydration AP poolish.

We are going to import organic grains from the US so we are looking for a small commercial grain mill, we were going to purchase the Hawos 200 BILLY Grain Mill, unfortunately due to the frecuency 50 Hz is not goig to work, we need 60 Hz.

Can someone please help me?

After a couple of months with little baking and lots of working, I was determined to bake this weekend - to just fit it in however I could. And this is the product of that effort, Barley Walnut Cranberry Loaf.

     Sometimes you feel like a nut....sometimes you don't.....Well I always love nuts; especially pecans!

For this bake I ground some fresh pecans in my mini food processor and added that to the levain with some AP and freshly milled whole wheat.  The idea was to get some extra pecan flavor into this bake and I think it worked.

Cranberries go great with pecans and also complimented the mix of freshly ground spelt, rye and whole wheat.  I added a little honey to give it a touch of sweetness.

This is today's bake. I got the recipe from sourdough by Sarah owens. It's a really good book if you haven't read it, the best thing about it is the fact that she provides loads of recipes to use leftover starter,  so you don't have as much waste.

Black treacle. Oats and barley. Sultanas. Three kinds of seed (plus caraway). Rye and white, or spelt if you'd like it gluten free. Did I mention sultanas?

The dough feels like making mud cakes. You have to wait until it's completely cold before you slice it. What can I say? It's the tastiest non-sourdough rye bread I've made and/or tasted. Link to the recipe's here.

Lucy wanted to get back to her roots this week and she wanted to use something that has been on her pantry for a while collecting dust.  She was particularly upset about environmentalists saying that pets are totally not necessary and all they do is contribute greatly to global warming for no justifiable reason.

Levain

237g/  95% White Bread Flour, unbleached

13g/   05% Whole Wheat Flour

250g/ 100% Water (12C)

100g/  20% Mother

1. Dissolve 100g of Mother in 250g water at 12 degrees celcius. 
2. Add liquid to flour and mix until a slack mass forms
3. Refrigerate dough for 6 hours
4. Remove Levain from fridge and let rise at room temperature (18C ideally) for a further 18 hours
5. Allow 24 hours of maturation before using