Blog posts

Hello, everybody! This is my first blog entry on TFL, so I figured I ought to give some pretext as to who I am as a baker. I thought a good way to do this would be to show some loaves I baked this summer.

Semolina bread

Miche, Pointe-à-Callière

I scored some Montana Wheat, Prairie Gold Hard White Spring Wheat berries while visiting a friend, and decided to try the Overnight Country Brown with the White Spring Wheat Berries for the whole wheat portion of the formula.

For this bake, to make the levain, at 9:00 p.m. I used 25 grams of my unfed starter (last fed about 10 days prior to making the levain), added 100 grams of AP flour, 100 grams of the milled Prairie Gold, and 100 grams of water. 

At 7:00am, I autolysed the 604 grams of AP flour, 276 grams of white wheat, and 684 grams of water.

I wrote this yesterday here at TFL.

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/39983/now-was-fun

 Here are the pictures of how the bread/s turned out.

This time I used my Oven to bake 2 loafs as the new Oven fits 2 Dutch Ovens.

I made one batard and one boule but from the same batch of dough.

Used top and bottom heat  250C for 40 minutes with the lids on the Dutch Ovens, then turned down the heat to 200C and switched to Fan for the next 25 minutes without lids on the Dutch Ovens.

Lately I find myself making a lot of baguettes.   I definitely have an ideal for this simple, hard bread, which involves the pure taste of fermented refined wheat sheathed in crunchy goodness, but how often my efforts fall short.   Lately, maybe because of practice, practice and more practice I feel like the corner has been turned, and more often than not, what I get appears to deliver what I'm looking for.   I say appears, because usually I don't cut into, let alone taste the results of my labors.  Today I got a taste simply because knobbly ends are fragi

Oh, and it tasted as good as it looks!

This was filmed between 5:00 AM and 10:00 PM on Wednesday September 3, 2014.  I was getting ready for and at the final market of the season in Big Sky, Montana.  Enjoy.  :)

-Mark

This one just came out of the Oven so I could not yet make a crumb shot. 

This one is made with a malted Brown wholemeal flour, I shall go downstairs in a minute when the hubby finished to carry his Office furniture upstairs.

No Caraway seeds , I forgot * hangs head in shame *

I have always wanted to make a naturally leavened croissant for no other reason than to see if I can do it. But most sourdough starter / levain croissant recipes I see on the internet have both commercial yeast and levain in the dough. I have nothing against using commercial yeast in croissant making or in any other bread for that matter. Whatever floats your (bread) boat is fine with me. Croissants and other laminated yeasted doughs are challenging enough without using sourdough starter / levain as the sole means of leavening.