Blog posts

After last weeks bake my wife said she wanted a bread like that one but in the shape of a loaf, but not in a Pullman pan, so the crumb would be a bit more open.  Well. Lucy said we would bale it in the Pullman pan without the lid.

I recently bought a 25 lb bag of whole spelt berries, and just milled the first of it. For this bread, I used 30% whole spelt, the remainder being Wheat Montana all-purpose. The hydration is somewhere between 75 and 80%. I had to leave the house during the initial rise / folds, so I ended up letting it go for longer than usual before putting it in the fridge to retard overnight. This made the bread slightly more sour than my usual loaves, but it is still quite pleasant.

So, i've been baking sourdough bread for about a year now. 

I love using a blend of various whole grain flours, in this picture, I've done a blend of whole wheat, sorghum and AP with a Rye Starter! I usually get decent crumbs when I add a little commercial yeast into my dough to help it rise, however, I don't get a strong crumb (or at least i think so) without adding a little commercial yeast. I live in India and the sourdough bread scene is still upcoming but slowly. Was hoping for a few tips! I'm not sure why i'm unable to get the bigger 'holes' in my bread.

I loved this bread so much that I decided to follow David's version, but substituted the whole wheat with white Kamut. I let it bulk ferment for 9 hours, put it in the fridge for 15 1/2 hours. All in all it came out even better than I expected! It has a lovely golden color from the Kamut and a nice bit of tang. The crust is wonderful. I love the flavor of Kamut and this recipe. Thanks David!

In order to learn how to write WebAssembly (wasm) code in the rust language (eyes glaze over... yeah, it wasn't an important detail) I've built a simple sourdough calculator:

https://mikedilger.com/bread.html

There is plenty of scope for improvement.

Torta depending on where you are in the Philippines can mean different things. Up to the day when I was just aware of one type, the only torta that I know is a savory dish made with eggplant and eggs that I often eat with ketchup. I do not know any other form of torta when actually, there are.

I  was commenting to another Australian baker Dell about soft wheat grains and flours and was mentioning the Caputo Manitoba Ora type O that i have recently found for sale in Western Australia in 5 kg bags and have been  using.

My wife was extolling the virtues of a Current Walnut and Fennel loaf that she had recently purchased and enjoyed, so i decided i would make a similar loaf using the Italian flour Australian Sultanas and Fennel seeds in a conventional dough and here it is i baked it in a recently acquired Sassafras clay baker.

I baked a :

100g Spelt

100g Caputo Durum Rimacinata

300g Stong Canadian White

420g water

72g starter - 80% hydration - from the night before

10g salt

I had a shorter AL this time 2 hours as I wanted to use the stiffer starter from the night before. I found that because I used the spelt and durum that I almost got a windowpane just within that shorter AL time.

Otherwise my usual process of adding leaven, wait 30 min and then add salt and a bit more water.

That's the saying.  But I was already home and wanted to go big anyway.

My wife was off to an early morning flight to Tobago for a Pan-Am Dragon Boating competition.  She asked if I'd bake a WW fig-raisin-pecan levain bread as some boarding gate breakfast for the troops traveling together.  Made two, sliced 'em, and packed them off with some butter and cream cheese.  These are designed to bake dark and craggy, the left with traditional baguette scoring, the right with a criss-cross design.

I baked this one several weeks ago but have not had a chance to post.  This is a 70% Whole Wheat bread made with freshly ground whole wheat with no sifting.  I watched a video on how to adjust the stones in my MockMill II and ended up with a super-fine flour, no sifting necessary.  I think for the next bake I will sift courser and still sift once and then re-grind at the fine level.

This one turned out a little denser than I would have liked, but it had a nice tang to it and made great toast.