Blog posts

It might not be December yet, so not THE time for Christmas stollen but don’t fool yourself by its name. This bread is just tasty and awesome all year round with some butter on it with your coffee at coffee time... This recipe is based on an old Dutch recipe that was published in the 60’s and I kind of made it my own after giving it several tries. So here is my version of the recipe.

Christmas stollen (recipe for one loaf)

I'm a novice weekend baker who's been, of course, baking for about two (frustrating) months... Having said that, prior to my not-so-successful challah, I had never handled whole wheat flour, used a soaker or preferment (and thus the "delayed fermentation method"), or even braided dough strands. So, it was reasonable to expect that I'd encounter a few problems during the bread making process...

Many TFL baker's have blogged on this bread, and for good reason. It is delicious. I haven't made it since last October. Today, I made three 568 g boules. I started with a liquid starter which I converted to a firm starter and fed twice before mixing the final dough. The formed loaves were cold retarded for about 16 hours then proofed at 85 dF for 2 1/2 hours before baking.

After reading Juergen Krauss’s blog on making 100% Russian Rye here

  http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/29773/making-russian-rye-photos

and re-reading Andy’s (ananda) many posts on rye breads, we decided to see if yeast water levain, in conjunction with rye sour levain, could do a better job of lifting this heavy dough to new heights and provide a more open crumb.

Here I am again with another highly hydrated white spelt loaf. This time around it's sourdough raised...

I didn't set out to make this sour but boy, I mean wow is this sour!

If ever proof was needed that warm and wet makes for a more sour bread, then this is it!

Dear All, 

I am posting here aafew photos taken along the way of making a Russian Rye, procedure and formula as in the first recipe in my blog (there it's called Russian Rye, Andy's version (85% Hydration, preferment 167% hydration, 35% flour from preferment)):

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/25940/hussian-and-german-100-ryes-4-recipes

Here the rye sour ready to go: