Blog posts

Just a thanks to all the bakers sharing tips and experience and enjoyable writing. The world is a stressful beautiful horrifying magical place. When I need a break from the bad and some bread inspiration, this has been my digital refuge for a couple of years it seems like. Just visited another popular social site right before bed looking for something lighthearted, but people feel compelled to share the most horrible things there even though they are available on every news website. No such problem here, and TFL (thank the friggin lord).

My starter has been alive for three months now and I've made a few loaves since then. I've learned about many things and gotten some experience with how temperature affects the entire process. Summer has arrived and I can expect 25-30º C (77-86º F) room temperature. I do have a basement which I might be using for overnight fermentation now. I need to measure the temperature, but expect it to be around 15-20º C.

I was surfing this site and saw the idea of 1-2-3 sourdough and thought "Why not?" since I had some levain left over from my other bake. I built up what I had left in two builds to 288 g of 100% unbleached flour starter.

This was inspired from the Tartine 3 porridge breads. I decided to try doing my own thing and to let go of watching the clock and watching the dough instead. It actually worked pretty well.

My starter is a 66% rye starter that is kept in the fridge as per DAB's method. I started with 11 grams and did 3 builds before using it with my dough. The flour used was high extraction flour from a local miller.

Back in March, Stan (elagins) posted about a Lithuanian black rye bread that he had made.  It looked absolutely lovely and worthy of a bake.  However, my baking over the past three months has gone in other directions.  Worse, I've taken about as much bread out of my freezer as I have out of my oven.  It's a wonderful tool, the freezer, but baking is much more satisfying than thawing.

Six Sprouted Grain Sourdough With Toasted Buckwheat Porridge – A Great Everyday Sandwich Bread

I don't like sweet cakes or muffins(too much sugar is not good for me), so I decided to use my discarded SD starter to make a salty one so I can pack it for my work lunch. It turns out to be yummy (unexpectedly)!

Materials:

This has been a very enjoyable baking project.  This was the second half of the last focaccia dough that had rested in the fridge for 3 days prior to baking.  I changed up the herbed evoo using dried basil this time. I found the fresh basil used in the last batches tended to burn and become a little bitter. This is not an issue with the dried herbs: rosemary, basil, oregano and Italian seasoning.

5 boules I baked at Sat and Sun!

Decided to experiment with some summer sausage and cheese. The dough was made with a combo of fresh ground  high extraction Red Fife, home ground corn meal, and AP. The leaven build was started at 5:30 AM with 30g starter, 50g Red Fife, 50g AP, and 70g water. At the same time started the autolyse with 114g Red Fife, 36g corn meal,100g AP and 170g water. The leaven moved fast because it is about 80F in the house and was ready after about 2 hr since I wanted to catch it still on the rise and very active.