Blog posts

Hello,

This was my first attempt working with flax seeds.  I got a bag of brown whole flax seeds from the grocery store, soaked them at 300% hydration for 12 hrs.   Separately, I made a 3lb / 1362g dough at 68% hydration using 90% AP flour, 10% einkorn flour, and a touch of honey (5%).   20% of the flour was a liquid levain at 125% hydration, 50% of the flour was a cold flour soaker at 80% hydration.   For the flax seed soaker, I wasn't sure in advance how many seeds I'd want in the dough, so I just soaked a bunch of seeds, more than I'd need.  

Cat and I decided to go for a hike yesterday on Mount Sutro, the wooded mountain in the middle of San Francisco.  Since we knew we’d be in for some calorie-burning, we stopped on the way at our neighborhood pizzeria, Pizzetta 211, a tiny place that is often rated as the best in the City.  Cat had a bacon and butternut squash pie with chipotle crème fraiche.  I had one with homemade sausage, radicchio and Gruyere.  Sorry, I didn't have my camera along.

I have been working through an abundance of whole rye flour and strong bread flour lately so I’ve dropped anchor in the sourdough rye section of Hamelman’s Bread.  I couldn’t quite make up my mind this week so I picked two.  First was the Whole-Rye and Whole-Wheat Bread, baked pretty much by the book.  Next was the Sourdough Rye with Walnuts.  I turned that one into something a little different.

... and now for something different.

We helped celebrate a good friends birthday last night––the same person who I have recently started baking a weekly sourdough loaf for :)

These are so delicious, I can't stop snacking on them.  Everyone loves these, make extra because they won't last long and save some for baking.  I also make lemon for baking and eating. 

The peels were dried in my oven, set on Bread Proof mood.  I had a large batch but, I imagine these would also dry very nicely in the B&T proofer, using a dry setting, No water would be added to your proofer and a higher setting of heat would be used for drying.

Let me start by apologizing to the generations of German bakers before me. I have been trying to learn about the dense style dark bread sometimes called Pumpernickel or Schrotbrot or Roggen Vollkornbrot.  I've baked the Hamelman Horst Bandle bread and liked it after I finally figured out how to bake it at home. Then I have been fooling with the Barm process and Barm breads, both white and rye flours. I read a comment from Dan Lepard about soaking whole berries in dark ale after simmering to soften.

I've had this book "100 Great Breads" by Paul Hollywood for many years when my friend Grace gave it for my birthday. I've always wanted to try one of the recipes but laziness always got in the way. Until my passion for baking started coming back and thought, why not give it a try? So today at work, I made sure I would make this bread no matter what. So during my spare, short time, I was able to prep the mise en place and just dump them all in the mixer. It was pretty quick, no need to soak the yeast in warm liquid.