I've decided to pursue the Ken Forkish Walnut Levain recipe a bit further. This weekends bake consisted of a combo of Giusto's La Parisienne Flour (https://nybakers.com), KA Organic Whole Wheat Flour, and my own rye based levain. I substituted the active dry yeast with Fleischmann's Fresh Active Yeast.
This is one of my very favourite breads. It is so creamy and delicious.
Wanted to make a mostly white sourdough with just around 11% whole grain flour (mostly wheat and a tiny bit of rye from the starter) and bread flour for the most part (mix about half-half of 12.3% and 13% protein) for a barbecue/picnic today. Wanted to try for a more open crumb with 80% hydration. Here is the formula: https://fgbc.dk/1mrr
It has been a considerable blot of time since my regularly featured Italian enriched doughs were frequently demonstrated. I am out of practice, and in need to validate my reputation, even if to myself but not only that but to exceed where I recognised the faults. Now armed with a new bit of kit, the Hanna “Bread and Dough” pH meter, I wanted to go deeper where such tracking was once a novel endeavour, the time had come to up my game as it were.
This is the third time I’ve bake this formula I first put together for the semolina CB. I hadn’t baked it since that time and wanted to try it out again. I finally received my new pH meter, the Hanna bread and dough model and used it for the first time for this bake. I’ll know how it worked out when I finally slice this open, I will say I was surprised at how little a rise in the aliquot jar corresponded with the pH readings at which other well known bakers follow. Now of course, pH will vary greatly based on the hydration and flour composition of the dough.
To continue the story of milk/sandwich bread, I decided to change it all up, and tried using semolina in the dough, to finally add an egg, increase the hydration (~70%), and do a double rise. Also made two loaves, but each was much smaller. Due to scheduling, I had to do a long retard too. Here is the formula: https://fgbc.dk/1moj
Starting All Over Again
I've been hit by a mystery starter affliction. The starter, levain and dough would rise well and in a timely manner. But when the dough went into the oven, loft and oven spring were poor.
June 9, 2021.
So I've been playing a lot with stone-ground WW durum. It makes great flatbread/chapatis at 100%, and great egg-less noodles at 50% mixed with 50% Golden Temple white/red bag durum.
I wrote somewhere, that anything over 33% WW durum in a leavened loaf bread just doesn't seem to be workable. It becomes a brick, or a rubbery sponge.
Mariana mentioned that there is a popular Russian flour mix that uses 25% durum, so I thought I'd play with that number.
Plan:
I made these a while ago and thought to post them to my blog during our 4th COVID lockdown (bored). I learned how to make these during Chef Jacob Burton’s online culinary boot camp. I learned the bun sizes for large, regular and slider buns.
155 g each for large (4.5 inch) buns - about 114 mm
100 g each for regular size (4 inch) buns - about 100 mm
55 g each for slider size (3 inch) buns - about 76 mm
A well-formed bun was baked using foil ring molds held together with a couple of staples.
