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Sourdough: sweet or sour, I like it but each have its own place where it shines and complements whatever it was paired with. A pairing that is greater than the sum of its parts; the bread and its pair become exponentially more delicious that if one was to eat each one separately and alone. I was focused for a long time in baking mild sourdoughs because my parents do not like sour breads and I haven't met anyone with a greater or at least the same "Sour Threshold" as mine.

Lucy was more giddy than usual with this week’s baking experiment that actually ended up making bread instead of a scientific oddity – as seen on TV.  The premise was simple enough.  Do as little as possible and then do less than that but still squeeze in moderate glass of wine – in a plastic glass of course.

 See it is more matt.  I took the picture out to protect the innocent

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whew....I think that says it all !  Date yeast water has been stored in fridge. Still going strong and I had added water to the used dates to see how it would hold up. So far so good. Levain loves Kamut . It filled the jar in a matter of a couple hours so I stored in fridge. Using up many flours from Breadtopia in an effort to move forward with grinding my own grains. These three loaves are the proportions that I used for the buns except I used more grains in the mix to = 532g. I used my Middle Eastern date syrup instead of maple syrup.

Well, not sure where my head was yesterday, it was perhaps a comedy of errors but I didn't think that as I put the dough in the fridge to proof overnight.  Start at the beginning. Three different bakes, 1 small loaf each. 

Monday 13:30 refresh 60% ish starter 10 g = 20 water + 30 flour

21:30 pm mix three levains and leave overnight on bench.  it was cool overnight - only 18 deg C when I got up next morning/

Tuesday 7 am - put levains in a cooler part of the pantry as I would not need till after lunch.

11:45 am Country Champlain.  Mix together

Another double levain dough. I joined a facebook group that uses only yeast waters for baking. Wow....there is SO much info and amazing pictures of breads etc. Anyway I got my feet wet , so to speak with date water. I took a small amount of my AYW and inoculated it with 6 dried dates. Whoa...stand back !  It was full of bubbles in just a couple hours using the lights in my oven to warm it. I added a piece of orange peel, as I do with my apple yeast water, as I think it keeps it from getting too much  alcohol formation. 

733g unbleached KA

266g Spring WW

BASIC SOURDOUGH BOULE, 70% HYDRATION, 80% TYPE 550 BIODYNAMIC FLOUR FROM SPIELBERGERMUEHLE AND 20% MACINATO INTERO DI FARRO FROM MULINO MARINO. RETARDED 18 HOURS. BAKED IN A COMBI OVEN ON A BAKING STEEL, WITH THE COMBO COOKER COVER FOR THE FIRST 15 MINUTES. 

First a shout out to JustJoel whose post lit a fire under me to get this post finished!

European Peasant Loaf

I am continuing my quest, as one of many others, for getting better oven spring and open crumb. This is my adaptation of Trevor’s European Peasant Bread.

Recipe:

150 g freshly milled spelt

150 g freshly milled rye

150 g Arva Mills whole wheat flour

820 g unbleached flour

50 g freshly ground flax

850 g filtered water

23 g Himalayan pink salt

30 g kefir

280 g 100% hydration levain (procedure for this is in recipe)