Blog posts

 It's been awhile, and this entry is more to try and keep track of what's been baked lately.

After my third shot at the Hamelman five-grain, I went back to my usual formula, but adding the Hamelman-style hot soaker. One of the loaves actually made it down to Burgundy, where spring had put in an early appearance, as in all of France that week.

Taking a page from Ian

http://www.gadgetify.com/mecs-tech-ultrasonic-knife/

Have to get one of these for sure!

Inspired by the Community Bake a month or so ago, I decided to take a stab at Hamelman's Five-Grain Levain recipe.  This turned out to be a really delicious bread, which my wife likes a lot too, and there will be more loaves baked in the future.

The aroma is unbelievable!

Made with Stoates (Whole Spelt) and Marriage's (Superfines) Flour, tap water (pH 7.8) and sea salt. 

Refresh (aka levain) 4 hrs @ 30C
50g LM (from bath)
50g Stoates Whole SPelt
15g water
= very firm 45% est. hydration.

400g flour (50% Spelt, 50% white)
111g LM as above
280g water
9.5g salt
10g olive oil

Bulk 2hrs @ 28C

Shaped, not moulded/freestanding and proved until triple (proper triple!) 5hrs@ 27C.

I am tinkering with different flours and methods and one of them is to develop gluten for my weekly handmixed 4kg batch as close to a window pane as I can.....without having a mixer for now...

Carole aka DesigningWoman kindly recommended some videos from the Ecole International de Boulangerie for 'petrissage manuel en masse' which is basically manual mixing with folding and slap and folds...BUT I love in particular what he does when he divides and layers the dough pieces during slap and folds...

It’s been ages since I last baked a porridge loaf so I’ve decided to bake one again. This is the first time I worked with amaranth flour. I went for bagged flour since it’s 4 times cheaper than buying the grains and grinding them myself… Despite that, its flavor has really surprised me.

25% Amaranth 15% Sprouted WW Oat Porridge SD

Dough flour:

Let me share with you this nice flavored sourdough that came out of the oven this morning. It uses a mix of bread flour (65%), whole wheat and rye. I milled WW and rye in the blender, but did not sift out any bran this time.

San Francisco Style Sourdough Bread

March, 2019

David Snyder

This recipe was kindly shared by Ann Rogers who got it from Mike Giraudo. Mike's recipe is his own adaptation of that of Ramon Padilla,who worked for 30 years as a baker for Parisian and Boudin bakeries in San Francisco.

These are the instructions she provided verbatim, followed by my adaptation, reformulated to make 1000g of dough.
------------------------------------------

This is today's daily bread...made with rolled oats fermented overnight with levain and water before being mixed into a rye/spelt/Marquis wheat dough along with some chopped almonds; shaped loaves were dusted with sifted bran and some sesame seeds, cold proofed overnight and baked this morning direct from the fridge in pre-heated DOs.