Blog posts

Recently I have been trying to find breads that deliver great flavor with a nutty after taste and also look good. After I found Mark Sinclair's Back Home Bakery recipe for Multi Grain bread I have come to appreciate his experience and sense for selecting grains and methods. I have made 5 or 6 batches of the Multi Grain and it is just so full of flavor I can't get over it.

Here are some pictures of a batch of Hamelman's light rye that I made using a couple of dutch ovens simultaneously.  I did the entire mixing/kneading process by hand just to be able to get a good feel for the dough.  I doubled Hamelman's recipe and made 2 three pound loaves using 2 dutch ovens.

3 loaves

Sponge

512 gram AP

608 gram water

68 gram honey

4.5 gram active dry yeast (1 tspn)

-combine all until very smooth

-ferment 1 hour at room temp, 8 to 24 chilled.

as some rather large cracks were forming last night, i decided to pull out the sand.

and it didn't collapse, explode or catch on fire.

i spent an hour or so patching the cracks and then put a pan of charcoal inside to help with the drying process. tonight i'll light a small fire.

here i am putting the mud layer over the sand form:

from gardener to baker:

up to the thermal layer on a new earth oven, and i hope to be baking bread by the end of july.

I built the base out of reclaimed concrete (a former backyard patio) and scavenged concrete blocks. with the sand, firebrick and tools i'm in this about $120 bucks. and, of course, about 2 grand in labor - but hey, that doesn't count, right?

this took about 3 months from the initial conception to this point, with about 5 good days of work. most of the time was spent collecting the materials.

Hamelman's Pain Rustique modified a bit.

One 700GM loaf

Overall Formula:

AP Flour 95% - 383GM

WW Flour 5% - 20GM

Water 71% - 286GM

Salt  2% - 8GM

Yeast (Active Dry) 0.6% - 2.4GM

TOTAL YIELD 173.6% (4.033)

 Poolish: (50%)

AP Flour 100% - 202GM

Water 100% - 202GM

Yeast - Spec (<1/8 tspn)

Final Dough

AP Flour - 181GM

WW Flour - 20GM

Water - 84GM

Salt - 8GM

Yeast - 2GM (1/2 tspn)

This recipe is a modified version of Floyd's !0 Minute Banana Bread recipe shown at the lower left on the home page. It incorporates most of the suggestions Foolish Poolish made just recently and a change or two of my own. I just happened to have some over-ripe bananas and some left-over starter this morning, so I though , "Why not?" It's delicious and so tender it almost slices itself!

Sourdough Banana Bread

Preheat oven to 350° F

In a food processor, combine and pulse until broken up:

1/2 stick of room temperature butter (4 ounces/60 gr.)

I'm always excited when my coffee tastes as good as it smells. The same applies to bread. For some reason the aroma and flavor of things don't always line up to be what I expect. Recently I tried Mark Sinclair's Multi Grain Bread from the recipe he has posted on his "The Back Home Bakery" website. I have tried a few other combinations of grains and methods that were pretty good but this was on the next level for me. It has a great heady aroma and it tastes wonderful. You can see the dough is not to dense and makes a great sandwich or toast.