Blog posts

I’m so excited that this forum affords me my own blog! What a unique and valuable perk!

As I continue My self-guided tour of the baking and bread world, I sometimes become frustrated with the lingo of baking. Not because I don’t understand the words. I’m a linguist at heart, and sometimes (especially when I’m writing a recipe), I can look at my musings for hours, trying to decide which word is best.

the loaf

crumb

detail crust - cracks

detail crumb - rim

I started building a starter for a weekend bake over the past few days, but on Friday morning got a bit ahead of myself and created a bigger amount of starter than I normally do.. I find feeding 1:4:4 works for my kitchen temp and starter strength when I'm feeding every 12 hours.. but then I came home late Friday night to this..

 Onions and rye go together like hot fudge and ice cream.  I haven't made a good rye bread in a while so today's bake was all about creating a flavorful onion rye with a moist open crumb.  I wanted to use my new Yeast Water in this bake but didn't want to only rely on it to leaven the bread so I mixed up a simple AP starter with some spelt bran and added the YW as part of the liquid in the main dough.

The porridge was a combo of rolled oats and rye chops (chopped rye berries) and milk to add some extra creaminess.

Leslie made some fantastic loaves with this recipe and since it was something that I had seen a number of people try and produce amazing loaves, I decided to give it a shot. Of course, I had to go and change the way the dough was put together. ?

Oat porridge sourdough has become one of my favourite breads. This is a variation on the oat porridge bread in Chad Robertson's "Tartine 3". I was intrigued by Robertson's addition of almonds and almond oil to complement the texture and flavour of the oat porridge and have been using the basic oat porridge bread recipe to explore other additions.  

On my quest to get better at batards, I baked FWSY's white 80% biga recipe and subbed 20% of the flour with WW. 

Earlier this month, Joze (joc1954) posted his Barley-Rye Bread, a lovely dense nutty boule.  Having a bag of barley on hand but never using it before, I decided to give it a go.  But, as with my usual linear uncircular bread self, as baguettes.

Yesterday was the last day to top up bread for the next week plus leave some in  the freezer for when we return.

So Sunday overnight refreshed the starter, then Monday made 2 builds, converting it to 100% hydration and using bran for the 2nd build.  2nd & 3rd builds combined as we were going to be out until evening.  Before going to bed built the levains required for my bake.

Hamelman"s 5 grain Levain (pictured)

Soaker

Flaxseed 62 g

cracked rye 62 g

sunflower seed 52 g

Rolled oats 52 g

the loaf

 detail crust

 detail crust - cracks

 crumb