Blog posts

I’ve always wanted to bake a Volkornbrot, and Peter Reinhart’s Version in “Wholegrain Breads” was appealing enough, though challenging too. The Recipe involves a soaker and a biga, as usual. However, the Biga was in the form of a Stiff Rye Sourdough, and the soaker was a Mash/scald. I have elected to skip the called for yeast, and went by the baking instruction of Hamelman’s version of volkornbrot in “Bread”.

MASH /  SCALD:

No Knead Rye

2012-04-17 I mixed a batch of No Knead Rye at 2030 hrs with flours amounts as indicated (organic AP & RM dark rye), 200 water, 222 Kona Golden Ale, 137g wild yeast (orange juice starter, first use) in place of the ½ tsp yeast called out in the recipe, and 1 heaping Tblspn caraway.

Next morning, 0615 hrs, its bloomed quite nicely (2 ½ times)! Hmm…

Sending this to Yeastspotting.

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As long as we are still eating this baguette at least once per week, I am gonna keep the variations coming. At this point I am just using whatever I have on hand, and I often get happily surprised!

I was recently given a bag of kamut flour, grown and ground here on Whidbey Island, and I added it to my regular sourdough recipe with good results. My daughter-in-law brought me a four pound bag of teff flour from Oregon, and I added 1/4c to the same recipe. Oh dear! The dough became "slimy" and even after many stretch and folds it was still slack, so I was surprised to get good oven spring. When I started a loaf today I added some gluten and so far, so good. I should explain that the 1/4c of teff was added to 2 1/4c of Morbread flour. Has anyone worked with teff?

The other half of the puff paste we made the other day was used up on these tasty apple, pear  and cream cheese sleds.  This time I watched them to make sure these didn't over caramelize like the last variety.  I mixed in some apple jam in the cream cheese that is on the bottom and hidden.  Also, we reconstituted dried apricots, raisins and cranberries in some bourbon and also added fresh minced ginger to the chopped apples and pears that were sauted with some brown sugar and mixed spice.   The middle of the sled was docked to keep it from puffing and make

Yeast water multi-grain baggies, toasted with butter, apple ginger jam and homemade sage hot breakfast sausage on top.  Served with a springy yeast water strawberry pancake, maple syrup and over easy egg.  Throw in some nice coffee and breakfast becomes something special on a spring weekday.