Blog posts

Rudolph's antlers; Pepernoten versus kruidnoten

I didn’t have time to get creative this week so I flipped through Hamelman’s Bread and settled on the 40% rye with caraway seeds.  The only significant change I made was to leave out the yeast.  The rye sour (all of the rye flour is prefermented) raised the bread just fine on its own, it just took longer.

Leavened white bread.
12-hour leaven baked bread. Beautiful exterior and delicate interior.
I changed so much leaven, that I spelled it with a spoon of flour.
Very nice baked in an earthen vessel.

Sourdough Sandwich Bread

made with homegrown starter

1 cup starter at 100%

1 cup water

1 egg

2 T. EVOO

1 cup Prairie Gold White Whole Wheat

2 cups AP unbleached flour

1 teaspoon diastatic malt powder

1 T. dough enhancer

1 T. whey powder

2 T. non fat dry milk

1/4 cup potato flakes

Mix everything in the breadmachine on the dough cycle

takes about 1 and 1/2 hours, let rest in pan for 20 minutes

after dough cycle finishes.

Stormy Saturday: “Wholemeal” Pain au Levain.

I have a confession …

I built a new levain …

… but why?

For a few reasons … We are only a couple of weeks into summer and my wholewheat desem starter is not coping. After trying many methods of slowing the fermentation I am still ending up with overly sour builds … they are out of my control and smell unpleasant and it is starting to show in the resulting bread.

First

A walnut sized of fully risen dough, such as pizza

1/4 cup of warm water

2/3 cup of all purpose unbleached flour

Mix this well and place in bowl and cover at room temp.  Let sit for 8 hours then move on to second stage.

Second

The first starter

1/4 cup of warm water

3/4 cup of all purpose flour

The best bread!
My favorite white bread, 24-hour leaven.
Beautiful foreign and domestic, and very tasty too!

I'm thankful for bread, this website and all the bread nerds here. Hope everyone is having a great day. I've been wanting to share some pictures of my breads, but never seem to get around to taking pictures, but here are a few I've managed to snap. Instead of being in the middle of trying to throw together ten or twelve dishes like I usually am today, I'm lazily putting off making some quickbreads until the last minute and finally gettin my blog going here. My wife has started working nights and we're not having much of a Thanksgiving this year.

I am trying to find the possible cause for this balloon section in a batard loaf. It did not happen to me, but to some of my romanian readers, and I find this to be an intriguing subject to debate. I think the balloon shape is not a quality, but contrary, is unatractive and not to be wanted. Am I wrong?

I tried to figure what are the possible causes for this particular shape and these are my own conclusions: