Blog posts

The photos of Benny's Babka had me salivating, so I had to try it out.

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/66555/cranberry-orange-walnut-sourdough-babka

This is my first bake of rye at this percentage, prior to this I have only used 5-10% in my sourdough breads.  I’ve followed Eric’s original recipe but followed Dan’s procedure building the gluten before adding the levain, salt and holdout water.

The crust is soft after it cools and will slice better the next day. If you need bread that will stand a few days, this mix is good for mailing across the country. Sealed in a plastic bag after cooling, this rye will be great 4-5 days later and freezes very well.

For one loaf

Two sourdoughs diverged in a bowl, and I... well, I baked them both.

My Community Bake and tribute and acknowlegement to Eric Hanner . i made my first post  on June 10 2009 and received nice replys from Sylvia H,.dmsnyder. marni, ehanner, ques2008 and fellow Aussie  Shiao Ping who told me she had just joined TFL recently herself. Eric was always replying to posts and gave great encouragement not only to me but to most posts and made everyone feel very welcome.

In the immortal words of the Commodores:
"Ow, she's a brick house"

Wells fellas and gals, this bake did not go so well.

Recap:

The wife has tasked me to come up with a sandwich bread recipe our family can bake at least once a weak to completely replace our regularly purchased box store sandwich bread.

This post is for the results of my 4th attempt to make the perfect loaf.

Requirements

This morning I baked Sarah Owen's Buttermilk Rye. This is a nice bread! It's interesting in that it uses banana in the starter as a Japanese influence. Otherwise it's (for rye I think) a relatively straight forward bread. Personally I'm after making a seeded rye bread that I can use as a "go to" loaf. But I read this recipe in her book "Toast and Jam" and thought to give it a try. It is so good!! I"m actually not a huge rye bread guy. And I find it so strange to work with dough that feels like I'm a stone mason handling concrete! But this is fun and tasty!

I’ve always loved the idea of babkas when I first saw them on the internet.  They look so shiny and sticky and yummy.  Now that I have sent John Dough to rehab and have him on an all rye diet I thought I would test him out and build a white levain to raise this my first babka.  My old starter could never raise a good white starter, I’d always have to add some whole grain of some sort to it for it to have an adequate rise.

Well, I got corona tested today, I don't have coronavirus, just a cold. I plan to bake again tomorrow morning.

My wife was very pleased with my last loaf, but she had some requests that I will be adding to my requirements list.