Blog posts

This bread was inspired by Derek's post from last week here. 

After Covid19 lockdown I was gifted 4 kg of flour and suddenly my bread improved greatly.  Now I am running low and so I went on line and ordered 10 kg, crossing my fingers that I had chosen the right flour.  Todays bake was a straight up white 1:2:3 with each flour. I added a little diastatic malt to help with caramelisation.

Method:

We loved the Kamut flavour in the last loaf I baked last week but wanted a stronger flavour from the Kamut.  This week I decided to inch up they percentage of Kamut to 30%.  Still being unsure about going higher because I wasn’t sure how thirsty Kamut is and what effect on the gluten it would have.  I increased the hydration to 78% with the assumption that more whole Kamut would make the dough thirstier.  I still think that the Kamut adds a lot of extensibility to the dough and doesn’t seem that thirsty compared to other whole grains.

AP has 50%  Central Milling's 110 substituted. Starter from P.Reinhardt's 100%rye starter.

Recipe/formula/procedure mostly dmsnyder -http://www.thefreshloaf.com//node/15995/g%C3%A9rard-rubaud-pain-au-levain-second-bake except after two foldings, was refrigerated overnight, and boules instead.

Abel Sierra (abelbreadgallery) posted a new creation of his the other day.  Liking what he posts, as well as semolina breads, I knew I'd be jumping right on it.

Instead of his recommended Caputo #1 for the levain I used some remaining tritordeum flour, which seems to have WW character.  With no step by step to go by, I relied on my standard sesame w semolina methodology.

I continued working through Ford's beautiful new book with a recipe better suited to my Azure "unifine process" hard red wheat flour. The result has a great sourness to it, and a relatively open crumb. My main disappointment was that I hoped it would rise more. 

Having a family gathering on the occasion of my sister in laws birthday, so i made the bread for the lunch, i decided on two loaves and would require 1500g of dough. I had some Sweet Potato that i had unearthed from my garden and thought that would be a good  inclusion, i also added a small carrot to make up the required weight which was to be 15%. The veg required cooking off and i thought i might just as well add the olive oil @ 2% to it and fry it off in a sauce pan with the lid on, once this was cooked i mashed it and added to the dough . 

We LOVED the blueberry rhubarb galette I made last week so much I had to make it as a double crust pie this week to bring to friends.  Because of the pandemic we haven’t seen our best friends since 2019.  We are allowed to have a bubble of 10 people but haven’t really taken advantage of this so far.  

This is my second go at baking a 20% Kamut sourdough. I wanted to try an overnight levain build and saltolyse (autolyse with salt included) because it would allow me to get the bake done on the same day as the mix while still including a short cold retard.  I think this actually works out quite well and I may continue to do this int he future.  I once again used the aliquot jar and ended bulk fermentation when the aliquot jar showed a rise of 50% and after final shaping did a short bench rest of 15 minutes.