Blog posts

Finally, I got this one right!!!(hopefully)

Poolish

• 500g AP flour 
• 500g water (fridge cold)
• 0.4g yeast

Final Dough

• 400g AP flour
• 100g WW flour
• 230g water (20g water short)
• 22g salt (I love salt)
• 3g yeast

Method

I know I haven't posted in a while, so here's a recent loaf.

Formula was dmsnyder's SF sourdough take IV (http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/27892/my-san-francisco-sourdough-quest-take-4)

Edits:

One thing that happens when you bake for other people is they tell you what they want, and if you don't have it, sometimes they just walk away.   So it has gone for the past few months at farmer's markets, where a small but determined group must have their whole wheat bread, and won't even look at other offerings if it is not there.    I have been keeping a close eye on TFL for whole wheat baking.   True I have baked 100% whole wheat breads -- particularly Reinhardt's and also Pain de Mie following Janetcook's lead.   Neither of these satisfied m

This loaf was made using the sponge and dough method. A KitchenAid K5SS stand mixer equipped with a spiral dough hook was employed. The sponge was set in the mixer bowl and covered with plastic wrap, then fermented for eight hours. The dough was re-mixed for a little over two minutes because of the high rye content.

Formula:
Sponge
33.3% Dark Rye Flour
37.5% Stone Ground White Whole Wheat Flour
2% Vital Wheat Gluten
0.5% Salt
0.5% Instant Yeast
68% Water (Variable)

Dough
29.2% Bread Flour
5.6% Honey
2% Shortening
1.5% Salt

My wife claims that the older I get, the more like my mother I become. One of her idiosyncrasies was her distrust of any food not prepared by her.

I guess I am a little like that. I bake almost all of our bread, and I recently started culturing my own yogurt. I've noticed that, unless I strain some of the water out the yogurt is thinner than the supermarket variety, but it makes a perfect substitute for buttermilk in muffin, scone, pancake, and biscuit recipes. It's the consistency of store bought buttermilk.

The no knead bread has been all the rage since Bittman wrote about Lahey's method in the NY Times. I've always wanted to try it out, but just never got around to it. I had about 50 grams of sourdough starter leftover after feeding. It had only been about 15 hours since it had been fed (at 1:3:3), so instead of discarding it I used it to experiment with a naturally leavened no knead bread.

Last Sunday the weather turned British over here, time to do something REALLY BRITISH:

A Pimms party with our neighbours!!!

I supplied some of the food: Tried and tested Sesame Crackers and Swedish Thin Bread (from Bo Friberg's book The Professional Pastry Chef), to go with some hoummous and guacamole.

I will give only a brief description of the process, as making these tasty crackers is really easy, and the formulas and stories around it are published in Friberg's book, which I highly recommend:

Sesame Crackers

Bread Flour 77%

I was on vacation for a week and used my starter for nothing but pancakes (which, because they were watered down, came out more like crepes) and when we came home on Saturday, I knew that my usual tartine bake was not going to fit in with my weekend schedule. 

Fortunately, I had yet to bake from Flour, Water, Salt & Yeast and I decided to give it a go with a <gasp!> 100% All Purpose Flour loaf, using <gasp!> commercial yeast!

I have been baking some of my favorite recipes lately, mostly for family and friends.  While I was in the Midwest, I made a classic sourdough and Tartine sourdough with olives, lemon zest and herbes de provence (2). (my updated recipe links are below)

I was a bit concerned when I got home that my California sourdough starter was tired and flat, so I worked for a few days to get it back to normal.  It seems to be OK now, as I baked some bread for us today and for friends on Saturday.