Blog posts

I wanted to post about baking three baguettes at the same time in our home oven and how easy it was to load the doughs onto the baking stone using my DIY dough loader.

Developing the dough went well as did the shaping, proof and moving the dough to the loader. Trouble struck when I scored the dough as my lame was blunt. The lame dragged the dough rather than cutting neatly, resulting in jagged and ugly scoring. My concerns are evident in the baked loaves.

I guess I was due a pancake (almost)! Wanted to keep exploring the sourdough poolish idea after delicious (although ugly) ciabattas.

Decided to make a seeded sourdough with ~40% whole grain and a soaker, and made a preferment with all the whole grain in the recipe: https://fgbc.dk/1h9s

"Ciabatta are like geodes, their true beauty is hidden until you slice them.".  Don, our superb baker MTloaf, provided this wise comment recently.  

I love sesame in bread. These make for very tasty bread.

Recipe

Makes 3 loaves 

Porridge

150 g rolled oats

300 g water

50 g honey

50 g butter

Add-ins

75 g raw Sesame seeds

75 g raw Sunflower seeds

Dough

600 g unbleached flour

200 g freshly milled Red Fife flour 

210 g freshly milled Spelt flour 

75 g flax, freshly ground

700 g water

25 g salt

250 g levain (procedure in recipe)

The afternoon before:

My starters were fed more than usual the amounts of ‘food’ just before my husband and I left for a family emergency in eastern Quebec. This morning I mixed both liquid and stiff discards to make 100% hydration, then recalculated the recipe for a cinnamon raisin swirl loaf recipe from KAB. I’ll probably attempt this again (the hubby loves cinnamon raisin anything!) with ripe sd and some spelt flour.

Dough (all at room temp)

Did a variation on my regular recipe.  Swapped out all the WW for a mix of AP/Bread flour.  With all the non (low) gluten flours and the soaker, it's hard to keep this recipe from spreading flat when doing a free standing loaf.  This time I tried it with a round and seam side up.  I think it helped the loaf hold its shape with no score.  Spread just a bit on one side, but overall not too bad!

I've had a lot of compliments for this pic elsewhere so I thought it may be appreciated here too. 70% hydration, 20% wholemeal. I will expand on my method if anyone is interested.

This recipe is an adaptation of Maurizio’s cardamon sweet roll recipe.  The dough is enriched and uses a Yudane to gelatinize some of the starches to make for a more shreddable soft crumb.  After the delicious cake I made last week using yuzu lemon I was trying to think of other ways of using lemon and yuzu and thought about sweet rolls.  So these are filled with lemon sugar and iced with a yuzu vanilla cream cheese icing.  Let’s hope this works and tastes good. 

8”x8” square pan, lined with parchment.

You may know my frustration with this grain and trying to learn to bake with it at 100%.  With much advice and good helpful suggestions from many here, you know who you are so thank you, I think my fifth bake is the best so far without having seen the crumb.

Every month, starting January 2020, my bakery offers a subscription "Taste Tester Box" following a predetermined theme. We have three options: a bread box, a treats box, and an everything box. The everything boxes are huge and our subscribers get roughly four pounds of breads and the equivalent of 6 of our quarter pound+ almond croissants. Each month features two or three different breads and three different treats.