Blog posts

Today I baked two loaves of oatmeal porridge bread, about 12 hours apart. The plan was to bake them one after the other (I bake in my cast iron dutch oven and only have the one, so simultaneous baking is out). However, I wound up needing to run an extra errand this morning so the second loaf of bread was left in the fridge all day, until I had time to bake it and it had cooled off enough that I felt OK cranking the oven to 500 degrees. 

In Tartine No. 3, Robertson says that all of the bread recipes (with the exception of the Rene-style loaves, which are too seedy) can be adapted for crispbreads simply by decreasing hydration to 50-60%. I decided to try this with the brown rice porridge bread, as I think rice crackers are tasty. I added some sesame seeds on top of most of them.

I wound up using:

250 g BRM whole wheat flour 

250 g KA bread flour

So I've been hooked to "The Ogre" adaptation of Steve Scott's Grain de Lin from Breadlines   Recently it was brought to my attention indirectly that the hydration is actually supposed to be 109% while I've been thrilled with the loaves I made @ 102%.  I've made a couple small batches of this and decided I should share with my farmer friends as it is so good.  My adaptation replaced the "Lin" with "Oger" or flax with barley along with the decrease of hydration by 7%.  I'm calling it The Ogre Loaf.  

These sort of cinnamon rolls are similar to the one’s here:

 http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/32275/yeast-water-cinnamon-rolls

 With some differences  The 72%  Ghirardelli Dark chocolate that replaced the original chocolate chips.  We used a 70% whole grain wheat spelt and rye flour mix and the dough weight is about 400 g grams less making there ‘mini’ rolls.

If you have thought about getting a sourdough culture going but don't feel up for a lot of watching and waiting, I highly recommend the method outlined by Ian on his now rather empty Ars Pistorica blog. I nearly posted yesterday, because it sure looked like sourdough starter and tasted like it, and had lots of little bubbles. But, I feel, the proof is in the pudding, or my old friend, sourdough bread. So, here I am Sunday morning with two little loaves that managed to surprise me with some solid oven spring 10 hours after bulk fermentation start.

Here is the crumb shot from the Hamelman Five Grain Sourdough with Rye Sourdough. 

This weekend I baked Jeffrey Hamelman's Five Grain Sourdough with Rye Sourdough.  I followed the instruction carefully.  It is a very slack dough but handles very nicely. It has a very pleasing taste, but not as pronounced as I would have liked.  Next time I make it I will investigate how to make the starter more tangy.

When I first made this bread (recipe currently on the top right of FL), I froze two loaves.  I baked the first of the frozen loaves today, and it really came out well. I defrosted the dough in the fridge during the day yesterday, and did a stretch and fold and shaping before putting it into the covered baker to retard in the fridge overnight.