Blog posts

Last week, I wanted to bake something different. I also wanted to bake something light and soft, yet healthy for the kids sandwiches to school. I browsed through the books, and remembered that i had not prepared any preferment, so naturally i headed to Hamelman's book and right into the straight dough section. I have not made the oatmeal bread, so oatmeal bread it was.

As I mentioned three weeks ago, I've been working on upgrading this site to a newer version of the software it runs on. While I am doing that, I'm refreshing the user interface, trying to make the site cleaner and easier to use, and well adapted to mobile phones and tablets.

Today's bake was a loaf of Peter Reinhart's 100% whole wheat sandwich bread.  The soaker and wild yeast starter for this loaf used home-milled hard red winter wheat.  In the final dough, I added Sonora white wheat flour milled by Eatwell Farm in Dixon, CA.  The combination produced a loaf of bread that easily filled the 8 1/2 by 4 inch loaf pan. 

We enjoy this bread toasted for breakfast and topped with orange marmalade alongside a cup of hot tea. 

This weekend,  I and three other TFLers took a rye class at King Arthur with Jeffrey Hamelman.    Larry - aka Wally -  Faith in Virginia, and Otis - aka burntmyfingers - were there each driving from a different corner of the region.   It was fantastic to meet them for once, knowing them only from their bread and words up to now.  The class had 11 students (one didn't show up!)   ranging in age and experience, with the one from furthest away hailing from Malibu, CA.  

Baking from his book this winter, I've come to appreciate Ken Forkish's practice of growing higher volume levain refreshments and builds than had previously been my habit.  I like to feel the warmth generated by, and smell the sweetness of, fermentation in these larger levains, raising them in plastic vessels chosen to minimize the culture's surface-to-volume ratio when it enters log phase.  I'm a believer in The Mass Effect and the proof is in the baking: The loaves raised with these levains have been unfailingly delicious.

Kalamata and Garlic Green stuffed Olives........according to my bad math skills it is a 63% Hydration Dough

Now with a fool proof non-sour sourdough starter...  

I got 240g of starter with just one heaping teaspoon of starter inoculation in 6 hrs!  Ten grams starter with 120g of water w/ 60g rye + 60g AP (10% protein wheat flour.)

Gorgeous!!

I have been fiddling round with brioche and buttery type breads since i tasted the Treccia in Taddeucci’s in Lucca…

Now I can never hope to recreate it UNLESS they take me on as an apprentice…

Here’s hoping:)