Blog posts

With all of the discussion around biga on thefreshloaf lately, I thought I'd owe it to myself to faithfully make Abel's 90% biga bread which has become one of those famous recipes here. This time I tried to make it exactly as per the recipe. In the last month I've tried Rene's idea of a 50% biga with sourdough, and I've also tried a similar idea of a long 24 hour fermented biga made with sourdough at 90% biga.

I'm making three loaves for the office bread party next week, and in addition to the 40% rye and 60% spelt, I thought I will bring this...decadent loaf.

This is a follow-up bake to my 90% hydration ciabatta minis using different levain proportions. From that experiment I became more confident of using up to 50% rye levain in my dough, so I decided to apply it to this bake.

The goal is an everyday family loaf that has 1) good flavour; 2) extremely subdued sour tang; 3) is not too dense; 4) does not require much mixing; and 5) has most of the whole grains in the pre-ferment for easier digestion (husband suffers).

During the Infinity Bread Community Bake, I created an Infinity Soda Bread. See it at 

https://www.thefreshloaf.com/comment/529736#comment-529736

Today's bake is nearly the same recipe except I leavened it with sourdough starter instead of baking soda.

I made a batch of rieska (Finnish flatbread) this week using the recipe on KAB's website. I made it once before using the optional barley flour instead of rye flour; it was delicious. Most recipes from Finnish websites seem to use barley instead of rye.

In honor of my 16 Year old  Mookie! This one was made with high extraction freshly milled whole wheat, spelt and rye with a little bread flour mixed in.

The crumb was nice and open and it tastes amazing.

I like using the whole potato skin and all and just chop them up in my mini food processor. It makes for a soft crumb and the bread will stay fresher longer.

These little things are very good. I first had them in a fancy restaurant in Antwerp after multiple courses of little plates. Didn't care much for the plates, the bread was lacklustre, the dessert nothing to write home about, but the canele that came with the coffee, damn that was good.

Since then I've been trying to make them that good. Crunchy and caramelized on the outside, soft and custardy on the inside. It's a really spectacular sweet thing.

Good results today.

For 15 of them:

It is amazing what can be done with faux substitute ingredients nowadays. I've previously had some bread and rolls made by a local 'low carb' company specializing in keto products called "We Love Low Carb" and the baked goods product range is truly outstanding -  bread (sourdough and CY), buns, bagels, pies, pitas, wraps, pizza bases, and why not have hot cross buns as well!

I'm always into exploring what makes products tick, and this bake was mostly about learning more about how these modern miracles of food technology work.

Here's a list of all the bakes sent in for the Infinity Bread Community bake. Hope I didn't miss any!

[September 10 - added three template test bakes]