Blog posts

I'm a novice weekend baker who's been, of course, baking for about two (frustrating) months... Having said that, prior to my not-so-successful challah, I had never handled whole wheat flour, used a soaker or preferment (and thus the "delayed fermentation method"), or even braided dough strands. So, it was reasonable to expect that I'd encounter a few problems during the bread making process...

Many TFL baker's have blogged on this bread, and for good reason. It is delicious. I haven't made it since last October. Today, I made three 568 g boules. I started with a liquid starter which I converted to a firm starter and fed twice before mixing the final dough. The formed loaves were cold retarded for about 16 hours then proofed at 85 dF for 2 1/2 hours before baking.

After reading Juergen Krauss’s blog on making 100% Russian Rye here

  http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/29773/making-russian-rye-photos

and re-reading Andy’s (ananda) many posts on rye breads, we decided to see if yeast water levain, in conjunction with rye sour levain, could do a better job of lifting this heavy dough to new heights and provide a more open crumb.

Here I am again with another highly hydrated white spelt loaf. This time around it's sourdough raised...

I didn't set out to make this sour but boy, I mean wow is this sour!

If ever proof was needed that warm and wet makes for a more sour bread, then this is it!

Dear All, 

I am posting here aafew photos taken along the way of making a Russian Rye, procedure and formula as in the first recipe in my blog (there it's called Russian Rye, Andy's version (85% Hydration, preferment 167% hydration, 35% flour from preferment)):

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/25940/hussian-and-german-100-ryes-4-recipes

Here the rye sour ready to go:

Bonjour, everyone :^)

I'm back from Kyoto and in my first week, I've re-awakened my starter and am tonight attempting to make sourdough. I used 5 oz starter (nice and bubbly and active, 100% starter) 10 oz water and 15 oz white flour. The dough is really wet; I couldn't do stretch and folds because it was sticking to everything. So, I folded and kneaded in at least another cup of flour and it is retarding in the fridge under olive oil as we speak. It smells good but I am really out of practice.  I forgot to add salt until it was almost too late, but I sprinkled in about 1-1.5 tsp of salt while kneading.