The last few loaves have been an experiment in varying the flour that is used together with a white bread flour base. All of these breads are 80% white bread flour; the experiment is in varying the remaining 20% to be either chakki atta (Indian stoneground wholewheat), unsifted wholewheat (without germ), wholegrain spelt, semolina or rye.
@hanseata 's Aroma bread has been on my "need to bake" list for a while, and it seemed like a good time to give it a try. I scaled it down to make 1 loaf. My version:
340 gm home milled spelt
107 gm home milled rye
57 gm medium grind cornmeal
67 gm mix of pumpkin and sesame seeds, toasted1 Tbsp poppy seeds
7 gm fine sea salt
1/4 tsp instant yeast
475 gm water
My Hot Cross Bun Recipe
Here is a hot cross bun recipe I worked on last year, as I felt many recipes I looked at had room for improvement.
It combines elements from two classic commercial breadmaking books (Manna by Walter Banfield published 1938 and Kirkland's The Modern Baker published 1908). Other sources of inspiration were Rossnroller's TFL recipes and a few of my own ideas.
Key points are:
use of a true flying sponge to get the yeast nice and active
I was encouraged to try this bake, and with the recent activity in the 5-grain Levain CB thread, I decided to give it a go. Wow, learning curves galore on this one. First time baking the bread. First time using inclusions. First time using a soaker. Mistake transcribing the formula to my spreadsheet caused a big mess in the first attempt on Saturday. A few curveballs today. It was a weekend of ups and downs, and won't have the verdict for at least another few hours. :-)
By the time I was in high school, I baked regularly - including huge challah for large Friday night gatherings at my girlfriend's house. Mixing the the dough for those huge loaves was a significant effort. Oh, I wanted a stand mixer!
Hi all -- Overdue for a proper update on recent bread experiments (there have been many this year, from so much time at home!). But before that, wanted to see if others might be able to help me figure out an occasional problem I see with some sourdough loaves. Specifically, every 15-20 or so loaves (e.g. infrequent, but not completely one-off), I tend to see a thin layer or layers of only partially cooked/gummy crumb near the bottom of a loaf when I cut it open.
Came across this YT video and thought I'd give it a whirl. Trying to spreadsheet a formula from the video's posted percentages and amounts, and nothing really meshed, so I had to massage the spreadsheet for a while to get the amounts into percentages. And he is off by more than a very small amount on the hydration and minor amounts elsewhere.
Just wanted to quickly share a simple recipe which produced delicious bread. I think I overfermented it in bulk a little, so oven spring and crumb structure are not very impressive, but in combination with sesame seeds the flavour is amazing. The crumb is also very soft, which interestingly I used to get a lot when I just started baking, and then lost. Not sure what happened, but I'm pleased to get such a soft texture again.
Here is the formula: https://fgbc.dk/1boa
