Every time I venture to Whole Foods I manage to find something interesting to add to my bread baking and last weekend was no exception. I was already planning on making bread with some fresh chopped cherries so when I saw some 100% Cherry Juice on the shelf I couldn't resist buying it and using it in place of most of the water.
I made an enormous ciabatta weighing nearly 1 kilo. I used an 18hr-fermented biga starter and a combination of medium and weak flours. This thing was massive!
Biga:
400g '00' flour from Shipton Mill
160g cold water
1.3g Instant yeast
Final dough:
Fermented biga
320g cold water
200g plain flour (9.4% protein)
24g Extra virgin olive oil
12g Non-diastatic malt powder
12g Salt
2g diastatic malt powder
olive oil for S&f.
After the last white bread bake using the Pharaoh’s Mastaba, we went back to a 67% whole grain; rye and wheat bread with rye and wheat sprouts and a variety of add-ins and seeds including wheat germ, flax, coriander, pumpkin, hemp, rosemary, chia, cumin and red rye malt baked in another variation of the Chacon.
Recently my wife and I started camping. Neither of us had been camping since we were kids, and we were both a little iffy on the idea, but we got dragged into it by some friends so we decided we'd jump right in. Turns out it was a great idea, we had a ton of fun and met a lot of new people who are growing to become friends. We've been camping again since then. We just got back from a trip, actually. One thing I like doing for new friends is to bake them bread. This presented a problem with camping because I was without my oven. Still, I soldiered on.
Given my flour delivery was put back a week, and the weather has done nothing except rain here in the UK, seemingly incessantly, and forever, my baking schedule has been somewhat interfered with.
Finally, success. I watched Mark Strausman on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqJLExaX0yc and saw how he shapes the fully--and I mean fully to the point where the dough is blistering and nearly collapsing (thanks to Stan for that point)--proofed rolls and then baked them convection (450, 25 degress lower than conventional oven temp, preheated oven), two baking sheets (no stone), reversing the sheets midway.
Hi TFL. I'm a long time lurker on here. I've been baking bread for about 3 years now. First as a home baker and now professionally. I owe much of what I know to the fresh loaf(I've been using it as a resource almost the entire time I've baked!). I figure it's about time I contribute to the site.
I'm planning on posting about my home baked experiments in the future but in the meantime I'll share what I think is the best way to learn about baking bread.
