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This year's CSA organic grain share has arrived and it was a good harvest despite pandemic and incredible summer heat and wildfire challenges.  I received several bags of organic rye, a bag of Canadian Marquis heirloom wheat and a bag of Manitoba wheat, a cultivar of Marquis. Marquis was first developed as a cross between Red Fife, Canada's oldest wheat variety and a variety from India called Hard Red Calcutta; it combines the best traits of both parent lines and by the early 1900's was grown on over 20 million acres, about 85%of the wheat acreage in North America.

I am new to this forum and am excited. I have many questions.

Starter: I used T85 flour for my starter and maintain it using a 1:1:1 ratio. Now, I have not been tracking the rises nor quantifying it. I have just been feeding the starter everyday at the same time for the past month. Starting out, how much should my starter rise before replenishing it? Is consistency key here or handled day to day? My environment doesn't change too often. 

Bake: my bakes have been frustrating because they come out looking dense. I'm not sure how to fix this issue. 

To learn more about concentrated lactic acid sourdough (CLAS), please see here and here. 

Traditionally, to make paper-thin bread (khobz marquq), Lebanese bakers thinly stretch the dough on a bread pillow and cook it on a heated convex metal disc (saj). I have neither device, so I rolled the dough out as thin as possible and baked it in the oven.

Although, really, I think it would be better named “Apple Chopped Bread”.  One could almost treat it as a pull-apart bread but it toasts up so nicely that I prefer to slice it.  As its appearance suggests, flavor matters more than beauty for this bread. 

I’ve got a backlog of breads I’ve been making, so I’m going to start from the most recent and maybe work my way back a bit.

…

I love baguettes / French bread but I’ve never made them consistently – I just have times when I obsess about them for a week or two, not get them quite how I want them, and decide it’s not worth the effort.

Obviously there’s a lot of subtlety to making them well – the shaping and baking especially – that they benefit from the really consistent routine and environment of a bakery.

Olives are something that I would never eat although with time, I will now have the occasional one. That being said, it’s odd that I quite like the Sardo Olive Bruschetta mix. I’ve used this in other breads but this time, decided to pair with shredded Parmesan cheese. No crumb shot as they all sold, even the loaf I usually reserve for us. 

Recipe

Makes 3 loaves

Add ins:

175 g Sardo Olive Bruschetta, undrained 

100 g Parmesan 

Main dough:

800 g Strong Bakers Flour

As the weather gets cooler, I find comfort in having hot rice porridge with savory sides. One of these sides is caramelized kimchi. I made it from the last quarter tub I had and reserved the juice/liquid, and the left over from the meal, I figured I should try caramelized kimchi and its juice in a test bake - having read about this on TFL (can't find the thread now). For a burst of umami, I used a little bit of fermented tofu liquid. :)

This loaf was devoured in less than a day! Now, I've run out of kimchi for another bake!

Toasted Buckwheat Yudane Sourdough Baguette

Last weekend I made a sourdough baguette using the yudane method (20% flour from the recipe + equal weight of boiling water, left overnight). The yudane is added to the dough before bulk fermentation. I used fresh milled hard wheat for my first one.

Find that blog here https://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/69116/yudane-milled-wheat-sourdough-baguette

Slowly working my way up in the percent whole wheat in my Hokkaido sourdough milk breads.  75% is the highest so far and I think it was quite successful.  I’m not sure how much higher I can go and still get the result that I’d like.  I did change things this time to add an autolyse because a majority of the flour is stoneground whole wheat.