Blog posts

I’m just going to copy and paste the last week of a “new starter” journal I started on my phone. I started it to get my thoughts out and organize them as I agonized at the 8 day mark of starting a starter from scratch. For background, I have baked with sourdough off and on for the last 12 years and have almost no experience with bakers yeast. I’ll do it for a time and set it aside for a time as my interest wanes. I’ve saved starters in the fridge for long periods, or thrown them away and later bummed some from friends. I have never cultured my own.

 This is a loaf of simple sourdough bread that can be done by anybody without prior bread baking experience. It is a one day bread, but if you want, of course, it can be retarded in the fridge during the final fermentation. 

Sandwich bread is very popular as enriched with milk, butter, sugar. My recipe is not an enriched loaf. Is a simple sandwich bread made from the 3 basic bread ingredients: flour, water and salt.

Buttermilk-Spelt Bread with Rye Sour

David Snyder

December, 2020

I had a quart of buttermilk in the fridge. I only needed a cup for pancakes. I hated to waste any. And I had some really nice rye sour left over from the rye breads I baked last week. And there was a newly-arrived bag of spelt berries in the pantry. So, I made Cecilia Agni Hadiyanto’s Buttermilk-Spelt Sourdough Bread using a rye sour for leavening.

I kept thinking while perfecting and especially while shaping my 100%WW sandwich loaf recipe, that this dough is so wonderful, I bet it would make a nice boule. So, I doubled up on the recipe yesterday and made a pullman loaf and a boule. I kept the mixing and everything separate, but the ingredients and the process up until the kneading was identical. When it came to kneading, I kneaded by hand for the boule and used the Ankarsum for the bread loaf. This blog post only talks about the boule, see my previous blog post if you want to know how the pullman loaf went.

Bake #5 was better than Bake #4. But, I think skipping the shaping step isn't going to work out, at least not with this recipe.

Recap:

The wife has tasked me to come up with a sandwich bread recipe our family can bake at least once a weak to completely replace our regularly purchased box store sandwich bread.

Requirements

Ilya's deli rye bake #1

Well, I finally found some time to try a deli rye bread for the CB this weekend. I like the rye flavour, so I went for dmsnyder's recipe, but without any CY: https://fgbc.dk/12se

Everyone is producing such perfect loaves, time for a bake with at least one issue :)

In preparation for my bread bake, I followed the same recipe that I have been using. 900g White Flour, 200 g Wholemeal Flour, 750g Water, 23g Salt. I followed the recipe as I always have but during the bulk ferment, the rise in the dough was exceptional. The 10 Litre proving container was at bursting point with the dough expansion extending to every corner of the container. I proceeded as normal with pre-shape, rest, then final shape into loaf pan shape. Bench rest came next for 1.5 hours followed by the fridge retarding  for 14 hours.

Getting closer - timing and temps on the new oven are more sense with each bake.  For benny (coz I am sure he will ask), this is 33% Canadian khorasan T55 against 66% French T65.  I am really happy with the crumb today.  Burst is improving but still not quite the ticket ... but close ! 

I’ve made these before based on Bourke Street Bakery’s Spiced Fruit loaf but this time, I soaked the dried fruit in Grand Marnier. Yum! 

Makes 3 loaves

 INGREDIENTS

Snockered Fruit

150 dried cranberries

60 golden raisins (sultanas)

60 g Thompson Raisins

50 g Grand Marnier

Main dough 

770 g strong baker’s unbleached flour

110 g freshly milled Durum flour

50 g freshly ground flax

620 g filtered water

40 g plain yogurt

Round #2 of experimenting with "Skipping the Bulk Ferment" step.

Recap:

The wife has tasked me to come up with a sandwich bread recipe our family can bake at least once a weak to completely replace our regularly purchased box store sandwich bread.

Requirements