Blog posts

“Rossisky” using the Three Stage Auerman Process; Pain au Levain using Rye Sour and Wheat Leavens; Panned “Wholewheat-style” Loaves with mixed leavens.

When I saw the strong proofing OWS was getting from his attempts at baking the Vienna Bread from Inside the Jewish Bakery.  I baked this as a tester a long time ago but this is the now released version so I thought I’d give it a whirl. It's a fast rising enriched dough that just takes a few hours to complete.

This was inspired by Franko's 25% Sour Rye with Toasted Seeds. I followed his recipe with the following alterations:

I desperately need help with crust. what I want is a paper thin, shatteringly crisp crust. but all I can achieve is moderately crisp but thick, hard, turtle shell crust. I have tried everything imagineable. dutch oven, cloche, steaming, misting absolutely everything I can think of.  KA AP, Gold Medal AP, bread flour ..got desperate and  yesterday I even used 1/2 C rice flour .. got the shattering part, but under it was 1/4 inch of turtle shell. (great rise and crumb) Fortunately my sandwich loaves are most always good. specially James Beard's sour cream bread.

Hello,

Mr. Reinhart’s Wild Rice and Onion Bread is back on the front page; the picture and the recipe tempted me to try making some :^)

Not having any wild rice, black-and-mahogany short grain rice (a blend) was substituted, and a mixture of caramelized sweet onion, leek and shallot used in place of raw/dried onion.
In place of all bread flour, I used 1/3 each bread, 75% Red Fife, and 100% whole-wheat (locally-grown) flour.

After last night's poor results on the Vienna Bread recipe from Inside The Jewish Bakery, I received some excellent tips and advice.  I wasted no time putting them to work tonight in a fresh bake.  Unfortunately I am still not getting it right.  I have the same result, albeit less severly, in this next bake. 

After my recent less than satisfactory experience with gummy rye bread, I returned to an old, reliable favorite of mine - Hansjoakim's 70% Rye Bread.

Today I baked two things from Inside the Jewish Bakery: one worked out very well, and one didn’t.  The double knot rolls with Honey-Whole Wheat Challah dough are just as I hoped.  The Mini-Schnecken came out all wrong.

I haven't been able to get pumpkin and sunflower seeds out of my head since Franko posted about the combination here.  In the end I went in a little different direction, using 25% whole wheat instead of rye and adding flax seeds.  No special reason for either change - the flax seeds just happened to be beside the other seeds in the freezer, so in they went, and I've been on a light whole wheat kick lately that isn't quite out of my system.  So, I came up with this: