Blog posts

White with WW, Semolina and Rye

One of my TFL friends expressed concern that I had not posted for awhile. I can reassure him and you all that I am well and baking as much as ever. The thing is I have settled on a few favorite breads (if "a few" is less than ten), and I have already posted about all of them at least once. 

This weekend I baked something old and something new, so I have an excuse to report that to which I have been up.

This was a beet sourdough with 36% roasted beet, 25% Hard Red Winter Redeemer, 5% rye, and 70% KABF. The hydration was 70% + the liquid from the beets. I did a 2 hour autolyse and let the bulk go for 6 hours (kitchen was 64 degrees). The oven spring was fine, but maybe the bulk could have gone shorter. Interestingly I made a leek loaf simultaneously and those loaves had huge oven spring. Maybe the beets sped up the fermentation? 

The crumb isn't super open, but I think it's fair for a vegetable loaf. 

With cold weather settling in I'm spending more time baking.  I decided to make some whole wheat bread inspired by Tartine's version. It has about 60% whole wheat, 10% whole spelt and 30% all purpose unbleached flours. It has about 83% hydration and I added 5% wheat germ. 10% levain was used and I overnight-ed the loaves in the fridge for about 15 hours. Baked at 450 for 20 lid on and 20 with lid off - great oven spring.

I realized that I’ve been less experimental in baking recently. Today, cheesy herby bread is making a strong comeback!

Blue Stilton Tarragon SD with Sprouted Quinoa & Buckwheat

Goals: 2.25 pound dough, 1027 g.  75% whole grain hard white spring wheat (Prairie Gold), 25% King Arthur All Purpose, 85% hydration, 10% prefermented flour,  2% salt.  Make a 88% hydration soaker with the coarse home-milled Prairie Gold, but not the AP flour.

1027 / 1.87 = 549 g total flour.     549 * .85 = 466 g total water.   549 * .02 = 11 g salt.

549 * .10 = 55 g flour in levain.   100% hydration levian :  55 g water in levain : 110 g total levain.

Levain is all HWSW, Prairie Gold.

10th TFL bake. Dec. 2, 2019.

Holiday bread gifts.  Basically a 1-2-3  rye,ww, bread

Well today I made a simple 1:2:3 loaf with some wholewheat (17%) and spelt (8%). my objective - test baking in my new BBQ instead of in the oven over summer.  Just a standard 123 with a little extra water, 4 sets of coil folds.

here is my set up

I'm a professional baker, recently moved to Thimphu, Bhutan. Used to achieve perfect croissants with beautiful honeycomb back in Mumbai, but despite multiple attempts, I'm just not getting the same results over here. Below is a full breakdown of my recipe and method, please tell me where I'm going wrong.

Bread flour (White Swan brand) 1000g

Sugar 110g

Yeast (Instant dry) 15g

Gluten 12g

Bread improver 15g

Salt 20g

Honey 15g

Butter 200g

Water 440-450g (depending on humidity and dough consistency)