Blog posts

Decided to try out a new stone in the grill. First test, of course, bread. 

Made a simple dough for safety, about 30% rye and tossed it on. Always need to re-learn the technique every year, but I think this stone is going to work just fine.

Ru007's post on her Sourdough with Polenta, Sunflower seeds and Pepitas motivated me to try her recipe since it looked amazing! I didn't have any Polenta but thought that cornmeal might be close enough and with her encouragement, I went ahead and used cornmeal.

The plan was to double her recipe and be done but my starter was 100% hydration as opposed to 80% like hers and my math got wonky when I started using the baker's percentages instead of the actual weights after I had soaked my cornmeal. No matter, I am really happy how it turned out.

Procedure:

I originally planned to enter this for BBD #83 for a bread with special flour but I'm pressed for time and did not make it to the deadline so maybe it was really meant for BBD #84. Thanks to Susanne for a great theme of sandwich bread for this month: https://magentratzerl.net/2016/06/06/bread-baking-day-84-sandwichbrot/ and to Zorra for coming up with this great monthly challenge: http://www.kochtopf.me/bbd-breadbakingday.

I have been working on my standard bread recipe for about 2 years now, every week changing one parameter, I posted a question about different flours and milling techniques here and a response required me to write out my recipe and method, so i figured I would post it here too, as my first blog post

I am focusing on using local grains as much as possible, and i am lucky to have a great Bakery close by that mill their own flour that i can use

Wifely complement of the week: "What do you call this bread … so I know how to ask you to make it again?" Well, I couldn’t think of what to call it. I have made it before … sort of. It is based on Forkish’s “Pain de Campagne” from FWSY, except with a different flour mix, no commercial yeast and a different fermentation schedule. I’ve generally called such breads “in the spirt of …” whatever my starting point was.

Anyway, it is awfully good bread - very moist, wheaty and only mildly sour.

I had about 500g extra of my 100% hydration WW start (90% hard red winter wheat, 10% rye), and needed to bake a loaf for some friends, plus some for us. I wanted a bit more rise than I've been getting with 100% WW, so I used AP for half the flour bill (Reinhart's basic sourdough recipe). I'm really happy with how it came out. 

edit: Crumb Shot

I'm back again after long períod of absence of this blog. I will make efforts to contribute 2 times weekly with posts and discussions here sharing all my expertise on artisan breads.

I always bake with passion and curiosity. For me one of the bad things is to look that carbage boxes full of old staled breads that go away trough carbage trucks at final day at the bakeries of my wide country, Brazil.

I decided to revisit what ancient grains I have on hand with this simple loaf. It is about 60% a equal combination of Einkorn,  Spelt and Kamut  all fresh ground with the rest being AP for a total of 500g at 70% hydration. It is naturally leavened with one build using 50g starter 100g flour mix and 70g water. The rest of the flour was started to autolyse at the same time. The leaven doubled in about 3.5 hours at 80F and was mixed with the other plus some salt.

I love whole grains, and I wanted to go back to some of the loaves I’ve made and try and make them more whole grain. My polenta pepita SD has been one of my favourite loaves so I decided to start there. The first time I made it, I used 100% white flour (ignoring the rye flour in the 6g of rye starter I used). 

Here’s the formula I used this time: 

   I wanted to use some fresh milled flour from my Mock Mill that I'm testing out so I through together a simple bread using fresh milled whole wheat, fresh milled Kamut and some barley flakes.

I do have to say I'm very impressed with the control you get with the Mock Mill.  I used the second finest settings and did one sift and reground the sifted out parts again.

The end result was a very tasty wholesome bread with a moderate crumb.