Blog posts

Swiss Farmhouse Bread – “Bread. A baker’s book of techniques and recipes, 2nd Edition” by Jeffrey Hamelman.

My experiment into the world of yeast water bread was inspired by an organised community bake on the Fresh Loaf bread site. The members have such a wealth of experience and expertise.  When things do not go to plan, experts jump in with great advice. I learned a lot by participating and through others experience.

This bread contains walnuts and raisins and uses raisin yeast water for leavening. The first step is to make the yeast water and takes 5 to 6 days.

Two 260 g loaves, whole wheat sourdough, one autolysed, one mixed all together at beginning with 1% diastolic malt.

I liked the first one better for its larger crumb, deeper color, and a bit more tang.

But then again, who likes apples and who likes oranges?

This was the result of a whatever-I-had-in-the-pantry + I-need-a-good-camping-loaf. It was so good I decided to put it on here. It went something like this:

329 g King Arthur AP flour

174 g King Arthur White Whole Wheat

42 g King Arthur Bread Flour

260 g Local Stone-Ground Spelt, 60 sift (From Migrash Farm in Baltimore County, MD!)

336 g Flying Dog Gonzo Imperial Porter, 10% ABV

219 g H20, warm-ish

330 g medium-ripe levain (~100% hydration, mostly local wholegrain stone-ground rye, also from Migrash, + a little KA bread flour)

I revisited this upon request from one of my customers. I changed up some of the grains (Spelt and Kamut instead of Durum), added extra feta and Sundried tomatoes, and decided to go with a longer mixing time rather than sifting and soaking the bran. This last part made for a slightly more streamlined procedure. Hopefully it pays off. 

Recipe

Note: I mill more grain berries than needed in order to have extra to feed the levain builds. So add extra grain berries to the amounts listed below unless you have other wholegrain flours handy to use. 

I haven't been posting here much of late. I have been mostly baking variations on a multi-grain sourdough - some mix of heritage wheats, rye, kamut and spelt - with the whole grain flours between 30 and 50% of total flour and all home-milled.

It has been forever since Lucy made a bread of any kind or posted about it.  I don’t eat bread anymore because my diabetes is harder to control and I would rather drink a glass of wine, beer and bourbon after thinking about it - when sober. Hard to get snockered on one glass though.  It’s like being in a diet by limiting the plate size.

The Roadside Pie king method

Here you have it pie lovers the complete unabridged Pie King method. Enjoy!

Hello everyone.  Have been baking breads for 59 years and still learning.  Found this blog today while looking for a way to salvage an old dough bowl I purchased at a yard sale some years ago.  The bowl developed a crack and I'm hoping to save it as I love old items.  Have two old rolling pins.  One was given to me 59 years ago when an elderly lady was breaking up home and she asked if I could use it.  Yep!  Have use it exclusively all these years and it's like brand new.  Rescued another similar one from a yard sale.  Was wondering if dough can