Blog posts

I had not made Hokkaido-style dough for some time. For the fluffyness of it, I decided to have a run yesterday and was pretty happy with the rise and softness of loaf and buns. The levain was built in two stages throughout a combined 12-hour period, where the first stage was 100% hydration, and the second stage was a stiff 50% version. All ingredients are supermarket off-the-shelf, and I realize now that I am running out of AP flour!

This is for all of the new bakers who want to tackle a Tartine recipe and get a sense of what to expect and look for during the various stages.

The Tartine Bread book begins with the Basic Country Bread, which is 90% all-purpose flour and 10% whole wheat flour.  With a 75% hydration, this can be a challenge for those who have not handled much dough, but the recipe is manageable, and making this bread will give you experience in recognizing the signs for when to move on from step-to-step (and when to be patient too).

This one I baked in a Big Green Egg. I can't say how it tastes, it's still warm.

Recipe here: https://breadtopia.com/whole-grain-sourdough/

This is a comprehensive look at my freezer batch method! Dough formula and sauce recipe included!

Today I made my second attempt at baking the birote salado from Guadalajara, Mexico. It doesn't seem to be particularly well known outside of its home country: there is no English Wikipedia entry about it, for example, nor (to my great surprise) has it been mentioned on this site outside of a recent thread.

I'm working on sourdough tortillas.  To reduce calories  I like the idea of sourdough to soften the tortilla instead of lots of oil.  

So far I'm experimenting, just measuring salt and baking soda, and eyeballing/guessing the rest.

l did remember to weigh the total resulting dough today, about 120 grams, and that was enough for 3 tortillas about 8 to 8.5" in diameter each.

So far I have... per 120 grams of total dough (3 tortillas):

- 1/8 tsp baking soda. (Previously tried 1/4 tsp, which was too much. will try 1/8 next time.)

- 1/8 tsp salt.

What a great day for baking, today was a Lemon Fruit Bread. I upped the lemon juice content to be half lemon juice half water and included the grated peel as the Myer lemons have such a lovely skin. i also used 2 free range eggs from my daughters place in Serpentine where the 3 Hens range over 5 Hectares, the lemons also came from Serpentine

First post here! Started making sourdough about a month ago. I’ve lurked this site and got some really amazing insight from this community. little things you folks have shared that would just take time to understand and get a sense of. I feel that I’ve learned much living vicariously through your documented bakes :-).
I was gifted bread, by Jeffrey hamelman last December by a fellow horticulture classmate. It had sat on a shelf for a while until I got into sourdough. This bread comes from that book and it’s been a great resource for me. I scaled it down to make a loaf. 

With clearly too much time on my hands I'm constantly thinking of what to add to bread. This was a 30% whole wheat loaf with 10% cashew nut pieces and 5% flax seeds. I used 10% starter and retarded over night in the fridge for about 12 hours. It's on the very edge of being over fermented but otherwise is a great loaf. I don't really get a lot of nut flavor from it, but the crumb is super soft and toasted I got more of the earthy nutty flavour from the nuts. Nice loaf.

I decided to make two loaves using my typical flour mix: 50% KABF, 25% whole wheat, and 25% freshly milled spelt.

One loaf used almond milk instead of water and I added cinnamon, chocolate chips, and pecans during the lamination stage.

The second loaf added roasted red peppers, capers, garlic, pesto, pepperoncini, and cheddar cheese cubes during lamination.