Blog posts

It took  awhile, but this is my take on Karin’s Cecilienhof Ancient Grain Rye Bread challenge.  The list of ingredients involved initially had me convinced I would stay on the sidelines for this challenge.  But I had more of them than I realized on hand already and a little searching turned up the rest (ah, the power of the internet!).  Still, I haven’t had to think this hard about a bread in a long time.             &

I love baking with Durum flour and bake with it all the time, so I figured it was time to finally make a 100% Durum bread.  I have not used the 36 hour method in a while so I incorporated it into this bake and used some KAF Durum flour in the 2 stage starter and in the final dough.  Technically there is a little bit of AP flour in the seed starter but I hope you won't hold that against me.

I picked up the little mill attachment for my new mixer and have been experimenting with it my last couple bakes.

My first batch used 40% fresh milled flour (hard red wheat), my second about 25%.  The flavour seems really nice, though I've got a bit of the cold and thus don't have the most nuanced sense of taste right now.

This is the second time I have made this recipe, so I am still working on it.  First time I made it, the starter was really active, and after I made the dough, I had to go out and left it too long, so it was over proofed. I brought some sourdough starter to my hometown of Milwaukee when my husband and I were in town this summer.

I didn't know I couldn't post more than 1 pic for a blog entry. D'oh.

Here is a pic of the crumb of Loaf #1 (there were 2 loaves from the batch of dough).

Cheers-
Dave

As I mentioned previously I decided to try [url=http://www.thefreshloaf.com/recipes/mydailybread]"My Daily Bread"[/url]  with SD starter instead of packaged yeast. So I added 1 cup of fed starter to 1 cup unbleached AP flour and 1 cup of filtered water to make a "poolish" (I used quotes because I'm not sure what to call it when using SD starter).

Quick update on my Cadco oven.  It took an electrician doubling as an oven mover helper, an amateur plumber, and a fan, but it's now up and running, and I am starting to learn to use it.    No surprise but it requires lower temperature AND shorter baking time.   This fig anise bread took 30 minutes total, at first 400F, then 350F, then 300F as I kept lowering it to keep the crust from getting too dark before the inside could bake.   It looks a bit lonely in there doesn't it, but no way am I going to bake a big load of bread before I get to know its wa

Here is a pic I took this past Sunday.

On the left are failed attempts at Dave Snyder's SFSD and SJSD. I suspect it has to do with inadequate gluten development. Starter could be off but I've been able to work it up to the point where it will double in 3 to 4 hours ... we'll see.

Made some 1.2 kg boules using a liquid white and stiff wheat levain this weekend.  I used about 48% wheat and 2 % rye (in the form of rye sour used in the liquid levain) I would have used my white starter but I didn't have quite enough for both levains so instead of adding a touch of rye flour i built off of my rye sour.  I wanted a full flavored bread with volume and keeping qualities in a relatively small amount of time.  So 30% of the flour was prefermented which boosted both bulk and final ferments.  2 hours and 1 hour.

Thanks to Isand66 inspiration on savory english muffins, who saved me from my plain or sweet boring english muffins. 

I mixed the cooked onion, tomato and dried basil into the dough, with a few S&F, divided and proof for 45 mins.

Heres the crumb n front shot.

After eating it, im still craving for his bacon and cheese *Huff huff" :( , I will definitely grab some bacon for my next english muffins bake.