Blog posts

This week's bake is a side by side comparison of the two heirloom varieties of wheat Red Fife and Turkey Red. The procedure followed closely the epoxy method Peter Reinhart uses in Whole Grain Bread. A soaker was made of half the flour, water and salt which was left at room temperature.  The other half of the flour was mixed with starter and water then put in the fridge after sitting for an hour or so. All amounts, mixing techniques and temperature were exactly the same and both flours were freshly ground.

This is one of my favourite simple loaves - Ale & Yeast Poolish from Richard Bertinet's "Crust". The flour is 85% bread flour and 15% whole wheat, and the pre-ferment is a 100% hydration poolish made with ale (in this case, my husband's home made light hoppy ale). The dough is a dream to handle and it always behaves so well! The crumb tends to be fairly open and creamy, though the bread tastes quite different from a naturally leavened (i.e. 'sourdough') bread with similar blend of flour and same hydration.

After finding out my son has somewhat severe dairy and egg allergies it's really gotten me to realize how hard it is to find pre made foods that don't come in contact with either of these. My mom always baked bread growing up so I had some idea how to do it, but for some reason my dough is never the same as hers, even though I use her recipe. 

so I've began to make breads, they aren't quite what I'm aiming for so every friday I plan to experiment a little bit until I've found something im happy with. 

After the last over bake of no levain, old school pumpernickel which made a brick that couldn’t be cut with a ban saw, Lucy decided to go back to 3 starters for this bake.  We had some left over olives from the New Year’s pizza and we have always wanted to make SD version of that dough to bake as an olive Italian style bread or focaccia.  We finally got around to it.

Recently, some one posted a comparison of the Tartine breads and those of Ken Forkish. This reminded me how long it had been since I had baked a Tartine Basic Country Bread. I can't find that TFL entry now, but it doesn't matter ... even if it was just in my imagination. Here's what happened:

These loaves are still cooling. I will post a crumb photo and tasting notes when I slice one.

This is one of my favourite breads at this time of year. It smells just like stuffing and makes the best leftover turkey sandwiches! It's also great with turkey soup. This is a naturally leavened bread made with fresh, ripe sourdough starter so you can only imagine the smell permeating my kitchen when this bakes - sourdough bread with sage and onions! I usually bake the bread in the Italian bread pans in long loaves, but wanted to see how it turned out baked in the cast iron pots. In a word, it turned out good!

The last of the stollen and speculaas biscuits have been eaten. The Christmas decorations are back in their box gathering dust. The weather in Manchester is about as depressing as physically possible so it must be time for the first few loaves of 2015.

50% Whole Wheat

A 50% Whole wheat, 50% high extraction, 87.5% hydration loaf

After Gerhard posted the video of a Westphalian bakery making old school pumpernickel the same way since 1537I knew Lucy would be getting it on the bake list pretty fast since she claims the only real bread is pumpernickel if you are German like her.

In my most recent entry, dabrownman urged/challenged me to make David Snyder's Pugliese Capriccioso boule as baguettes.  So what is a boy to do?  Hmm.

At 74.5% hydration to go along with a 75% AP : 25%Durum flour mix and 20% levain, it seemed like a fine idea.  I had to sneak this one in somewhat quickly as:

Anybody have any experience re just rolling up some plain old dough into small balls and putting it on a stew that you were about to put in the oven? I have wanted to do it a few times but got a little cowardly and didn't.

I mix the dough once a week and carve off hunks for pizza and or bread as the week goes by and depending on what we need, so I usually have some hanging around. If the dough is gone then I have the starter developing. Looking for more fun things to do with the stuff besides bread and pizza.