Blog posts

I was not expecting this, but given how active my levain was and how strong the 85% (!!!) hydration dough seemed to be, I guess I'm not that surprised!

So... one of my cloches had thru and thru cracks in the top and bottom... so had to toss it.  Got a 3.2 qt combo cooker and decided to try one loaf with  my new cooker and new sprouted wheat.  I chose an iteration of Maurizio's Sprouted wheat loaf here:

https://www.theperfectloaf.com/sprouted-grain-sourdough-bread/

I used no AP flour, only my bread flour and also used 20% kamut.

I received requests for onion sourdough, so I decided to try a cornmeal porridge + onion loaf (similar to the porridge and shallot I made before, but different flours). I made two 900g loaves. The hydration including the porridge was very high, which made shaping difficult. I scored the loaves, but they ended up splitting open wherever they pleased! Yikes! 

A friend requested a loaf with honey and oat porridge. So this is it!

Recipe 

Makes 3 loaves 

Porridge 

100 g rolled oats

200 g water

45 g honey

40 g butter

Add-ins

75 g raw Sesame seeds 

Dough

700 g unbleached flour

200 g whole grain Red Fife flour 

160 g whole grain Einkorn flour

68 g flax, freshly ground

700 g water + 25 g

23 g salt

30 g yogurt

I made two 800g loaves with 10% starter inoculation and 78% hydration (excluding the carrots), and 2.2% salt. I used a mix of grains. I have never used 10% rye before and this is my first time using spelt. I mixed in 100g of shredded carrot, 1 tbsp cumin, 1 tbsp coriander, and 1 tbsp caraway seed (all toasted and ground except for the caraway which I left whole). I replaced most of the water with carrot juice which I made by blending 5 carrots and 250g of water together. I made some really ugly loaves this morning so here's to hoping they taste better than they look! 

• 83% hydration
• 80% bread flour
• 15% whole wheat
• 5% semolina (cuz I ran out of whole wheat)
• Bulk proofed at about 77F for 6 hours.
• Fridge proof at 41F for about 12 hours
• Baked at 450F in DO for 20
• 450 on pizza stone for 20

I loved last weekend’s apple pie and needed to bake another dessert to go with dinner tonight with friends.  I decided to make this Cranberry Apple Bourbon Pie this weekend.  I tried to do a plaid lattice design to also do something different than I have tried before.  As I have been doing, I used Bravetart’s all butter crust again as it has become my favorite.

I am still lacking consistency bake to bake.  One reason is that I’m only baking sourdough every 2 weeks on average, but this week got another bake in.  I’ve still been trying Maurizio’s Beginner Sourdough as that was the first one I started with and wanted to gain some confidence baking it.  Two weeks ago I made an error and added way too much water and the dough lacked structure, it tasted fine but it was a bit on the pancake side of things.  This week I decided to hold back 20 g of water during autolyse, so rather than 78% hydration the bread would be 74%.

Here in Indy, I'm part of a very informal "buyers club" of Country Life Natural Foods, www.clnf.org, that gets free shipping on large group orders.  When you buy 25 or 50 pound bags of grain, the savings on shipping is significant.

I buy mainly Prairie Gold and Kamut wheat berries. But they also have bulk grains and flour of many varieties, seeds, cereals, and just all sorts of "baking stuff" (foods mainly, but a tiny  bit of supply/gear stuff.)  Organic and non-organic. 5 pounds to 50 pound bags.