Blog posts

After years of experimentation, I think I'm finally starting to understand how to get the results I'm looking for.

Both of these doughs were prepared similarly:

• 586g Central Milling ABC+
• 53g semolina (Bob's Red Mill)
• 53g whole wheat (Giusto)
• 53g khorasan (Central Milling)

Autolyse this mix with 582g water for about 3 hours.

Hand mix in 150g mature levain (dome not yet deflated) and then do French folds on countertop. Let hang out for 45 minutes.

Add 18g salt and do French folds. Let hang out for 30 minutes.

I copied this recipe from Danni . Following her comments I increased the amount of cornmeal, but otherwise I pretty much followed exactly. My apartment was hot and humid (NYC summers!) so I reduced I lot of the fermentation times. 

at 7:30am I poured 220g of boiling water on 120g of coarse cornmeal and at the same time I built my levain of 33g starter, 33g rye, 66g whole wheat, and 66g cold water (my apartment was about 82 degrees). 

I just tried my first recipe from Sourdough by Sarah Owens. I used the Sweet Potato Levain recipe and doubled it, but substituted canned pumpkin for sweet potato. The recipe used 300g leaven, 680g water, 360g pumpkin puree, 20g molasses, 900g bread flour, 240g whole wheat flour, 60g rye, and 24g sea salt.

At 10pm the night before the bake I built the levain.

I already posted these creations to the C.B.  I feel these first specialty pizza pies of mine desire a blog entry also.

 This morning I whipped up a batch of my IDY pizza dough by hand, scaled for two 12- inch pies (324 Grams Ea.) The plan is for a seven-hour room temperature ferment. For these special Community bake pies, I am going way off the reservation in regards to toppings. My wife requested chicken as her topping, her pie will be chicken cordon blue pizza. My pie is going to be Italian eggplant Parmigiano pizza. Smile... This is exciting!

The tastiest sourdough I have ever baked. And also the most aromatic. It is one of those recipes that you bake in an enamel cast iron casserole dish and it just did not rise as much as I hoped. It had to prove in the fridge for two hours before being tipped into the hot pot, but I went swimming and it spent at least double that time in the fridge. I am not sure it that may have affected the rise. It is the best tasting bread without a doubt.

I’ve always liked the nuttiness of barley bread. It thus bothered me a bit when I couldn’t find whole barley anywhere… That’s until recently, I discovered some hull-on barley in a tiny Indian grocery store. Of course I ended up sprouting it for this week’s bake. Since the hull is inedible, it was sifted out and discarded after milling.    

30% Sprouted Barley Sourdough

I have been experimenting with different ways to use my home oven for pizza.  Tonight's came out really good.  I used a baking steel about 6 inches below the top of the oven, close to the middle rack.  I used 550 F setting and also used the convection setting which often adds another 25 or so equivalent heat.  I preheated the oven for one hour.

I loved David’s San Francisco recipe and decided to add some seeds to it and change the flour combo. I got the inspiration for the seed mixture from a guy named Josh (JoshFox Bread) that I follow on Facebook. He has a micro bakery thing happening similar to what I do but on a larger scale. His breads always look so delectable! So between David’s recipe/method and Josh’s combo of seeds, I hope I have a winner!

Levain:

63 g starter

63 g water

110 g unbleached flour

15 g freshly milled Rye flour

Dough:

Recently been corresponding with Katy 'Bakingbad' and the subject of Pate Fermentee was explored especially as a possible way of getting a stronger sour into S/D. As most of you are aware its a French term for adding old dough to a new mix.  It got me thinking about something i spotted years ago in a local West Australian bakery when i was chatting to the owner during his weighing up for his production. I recognised the different things that he was scooping up from under the counter bins  except one so took a closer look, he smiled and said its "bread crumbs".

This is a 66% rye bread made with fresh milled rye sifted so it's close to a medium grind rye flour.  I added some fresh milled spelt as well which really compliments the rye.  I had some left-over cheese grits from my wife's breakfast the other day so into the mix it went along with some mashed potatoes which were roughly mashed.