Blog posts

No anise, no pernod, no problem. Here's a vitebsk rye in which I used absinthe as the flavoring. 

In recent times I have massively improved the performance of my Lievito Madre starter and thought about doing something other than panettone. Off the top of my head I devised a formula, originally without egg but ended up adding one egg as my planned mixture needed more hydration. By the time of shaping and proofing, the dough was perhaps a little too soft but it worked out nonetheless.

I've been too busy to cook myself dinner recently, let alone do much baking, but managed to find some time over the past week!

I think something that's nice about sakadane is that it is quick to set up and maintain - less than a week to get a starter that's usable, you only need to feed it once a week, and it's usable right out of the fridge. The only downside is needing koji rice. But it just feels so forgiving (when used with white flour, anyway).

I awoke from uneasy dreams this morning at six to mess up another rye.

Past midnight last night, tired but too spaced to sleep, I mixed a preferment -- 11g of rye sourdough to 300g of whole rye flour (an inoculation rate of 3.6%) and 240g of water. I also stirred up a malt scald -- 10g of rye malt to 50g of hot water.

This is an earthy, delicious and easy loaf to make. Flour composition is: 22% whole red spelt, 22% wholegrain, 20% whole barley, 16% whole teff and 20% white bread flour. Hydration is 75%.

I began the night before by making a biga with the 22% spelt and 22% wholegrain. The biga was 45% hydration and consisted of 10% of my standard rye starter. I left this to ferment for 15 hours at around 15 degrees.

Here is yet another Danish Rugbrod for those who like rye bread.  This recipe came from a website named makebread and is very simple.

Late one evening I mixed some sourdough starter (100 g), rye flour (300 g), pumpkin seeds (95 g), sunflower seeds (95 g), flaxseeds (50 g), molasses (40 g), and water (650 g) in a large bowl.  Not knowing what to expect, I opted for a 4-quart Pyrex bowl with a lid, and that turned out to be a good choice, especially when adding the final dough ingredients.

Just for fun, I made panettone with three forms of strawberry - candied, freeze-dried and pastry base. It is fragrant with definite strawberry notes in the crumb, which is light, moist and shreddy.

I used 400g in 7” hearts and 745g in 750g paper pans.  

Process notes:

For a change a 100% wholemeal rye bread. Before and after the bake. The final proofing was probably a tiny bit too long. Got distracted and almost forgot about it.

When I still lived in Singapore I greatly enjoyed a specific soft swirl milk bread from a Japanese bakery. It had an amazingly delicious but soft, thick crust, and the crumb was very light, with some uneven holes, but had what I thought was depth of flavour - really the taste of wheat, rather than sugar or butter. This wasn't a typical fast fermented milk bread. I've been wanting to recreate it.