Blog posts

Hibiscus flowers (flor de jamaica) make an extremely vibrant pink/purple tea with some really nice floral and tart flavors.  I'm starting to experiment a little bit more with using other hydration sources instead of water for my bread baking.  I recently baked a loaf of bread that only used a milk stout instead of water and it turned out really good.

Haven't posted in a while, but need some advice, so sharing this over a number of forums for advice.

I've been finding my pan loaves are coming out tacky & sticky in the middle.  I don't encounter this problem with my free-form loaves.

I had a huge bag of apricots and decided to use them in a bread. Maybe I shouldn’t have bothered. ? I remember another time using apricots and the loaves bombing. 

Recipe

Makes 3 loaves 

Soaker

125 g Rolled Oats

250 g Boiling Water

Dough

800 g Unbleached Flour 

200 g High extraction Spelt Flour (230 g Spelt berries)

540 g Water + 50 g

22 g Salt 

30 g Yogurt

250 g Levain

100 g Pecans (chopped)

Sourdough crust, 10% Whole grain, (spelt & whole wheat.)

Fresh mozzarella, cooked crumbled hot Italian sausage, fire roasted red peppers and parmigiano reggiano.

I haven't refreshed my CLAS for almost a month, so this "bake" "forced" me to check on it.  Thankfully, it's doing fine in the fridge; the pH is 3.9 after a brief warm-up in the water bath. 

See my new toy? 

The old one... 

The intention behind this bake was to use enough barley to impart a distinct barley flavor, while having a low enough % to retain a good crumb. I made it 25% barley flour, which I milled from pearled barley from the supermarket (remainder was bread flour, except for some whole wheat in the starter). I also soaked some pearled barley overnight, and added it to the dough at 15%.

Ok, time for my weekly bake, so I thought it would be a good opportunity to up my Whole Wheat percentage to 50%.  Just to make it impossible to compare at all to previous bakes, I thought I'd also do my first overnight pre-mix (a la Trevor Wilson), AND up the hydration from my usual 68% to 75%.  Nothing like changing lots of variables all at once! :)

Tritordeum flour experimentation and summary.

Recall that Tritordeum  is a recent grain developed in Spain these past few decades and is a hybrid of wild barley and semolina with the advantage of numerous health and sustainability benefits.  

Crisp scrolls filled with layers of tahini and cinnamon. Easy and delicious. A keeper.

The experience is enhanced by listening to Giovanni Gabrieli's brass sonata - pian' e forte