Blog posts

I was looking at my stock of flours, and noticed some opened whole wheat bags, so I decided to use those and empty them out. 

So I made a recipe in baker's percentages, intending to add a small amount of sourdoughstarter.

35% Whole wheat flour
35% Whole spelt flour
30% Wheat flour
70% Water
2% Salt

calculated for an intended dough weight of 1 kg this gives;
205 grams of whole wheat flour, 205 grams of whole spelt flour, 175 grams of wheat flour, 410 grams of water and 12 grams of salt.

my friend travels quite a bit in her work. Presently she is in China, Kunshan. she lived in San Francisco before, and worked with a German company. That was how she pick up to love sourdough bread especially rye. she bought me Roggen Mehl1150 flour recently when she was in Taiwan. Yes, i sent her hunting for flour wherever her work require her to be!!

 this bake is for her.

For once, a recipe which isn't from Cresci! Though the baba dough is from another Italian pastry chef, Leonardo Di Carlo (a world champion pasticcere). He's got a massive new book out -Tradizione in Evoluzione: L'Arte e Scienza in Pasticceria - which is definitely on my "to buy" list when I think I can justify it.

I have just returned home from a weeks trip in the New England tablelands. This region is south across the border into New South Wales and roughly six hours drive from Brisbane. Even though it has some of New South Wales most renowned national parks and world heritage areas I was travelling for my usual reasons ... bread.

I haven’t been around TFL much for the last few months.    Work demands, some travelling, and a bum leg conspired to keep me from baking much.  And most of my baking has been ordinary…hardly blog-worthy.

I’ve missed you all, and thought I’d pop in with a report on some recent bakes.

I baked up more of Hamelman’s 5-Grain Levain, this time making one batch into 6 mini-batards.  They freeze nicely and one of these loaves is good for a couple days of hardy yumminess.

I have been baking regularly on weekends, but haven’t had the chance to post a blog. Lately, my parents, whom I bake mostly for have complained that the crusts of my breads were too chewy, and demanded a softer version of my hearth multigrain bread. Butter, and/or enrichments came to mind instantly as these soften the crust and crumb, in addition to the usage of a bread pan instead of baking on hearth which also contributes to bread softness.

So 9 weeks later and I'm still with it.  In fact I look forward to this more than most things right now.  It's fun, refreshing, and educational.  I've been wanting to do a Rye and so here we go.  As I've mentioned previously I need to have retarded loaves so i can bake the quanitity without overproofing.  And this quanitty may go up starting next week.  Next trouble is I'll need a larger fridge.  I'm gonna have to get coolers and ice to move our food too for the night and make room for more loaves in the fridge.  

In the month since our trip to Scotland and Ireland, baking around here has been rather hit or miss.  No, scratch that, baking around here has been hit and miss.  Consequently, this post is sort of a catch-all for the this's and that's going on in my kitchen.

One bake was the honey oatmeal loaf from the KAF Whole Grains Cookbook.  I love that stuff; it's hearty and moist and hefty and just a little bit sweet.  Makes a great sandwich, too.

We decide to use some left overs for this bake from the last bake of hot dog buns.  The left overs were the pickled onion, red pepper, tomato and poblano toppings that we added some kalamata olives too and then caramelized the whole mix to get rid of the moisture, add a roasted flavor and send this bred further down an Italian path.