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I'm baking away from home with different flours, but I decided to just try and make something using 60% whole grains (a hodgepodge mix of rye, white whole wheat, and einkorn). I used 1000g of flour total and about 85% hydration, adding turmeric and sautéed onions. I made one loaf on the slightly smaller side and then the other loaf ended up weighing 1.3kg!! I didn't have a lame, or a sharp knife, so I tried to let the loaves open on their own. The smaller one opened nicely, but the "miche" rose but didn't crack. I think I overproofed these. 

Hey all my name is Scott and I’ve been baking for a few years. Really enjoying it. Baking combines my interest in cooking, chemistry, microbiology, and working with my hands. 

So I too have been reading about stiff levains and decided to try an experiment. I split my starter a week ago and fed both side by side 2x/day. One at 100% hydration and one at 60%. Mixed up two levains at the same hydration ratios and made doughs of my standard country loaf to see any differences. 

In the pic above left is the liquid levain and right is the stiff. 

Getting back into sourdough after a long hiatus and a few false starts.  I built my starter and it took almost two weeks, but now it seems strong and vigorous.  Going to try to keep track here of how things turn out.

I think I've still got it!

Wisconsin's safer at home order has got me baking up a storm! Huge thanks to dabrownman for his NMNF starter method. 

I won't share the first loaf...we'll call that tasty (but ugly) practice.

My whole wheat w/ flax meal was an experiment very loosely based on a recipe from Tartine No. 3. It was my first whole wheat loaf and was a nightmare to shape, but it turned out great!

A TFL member sent me  a kind inquiry as to my welfare, since I hadn't posted any recent baking. Well, I am fine, thank you, except for some cabin fever. I feel great and not particularly vulnerable, considering my .... seniority. My hyper-prudent spouse is suppressing my daily urges to expose myself to nasty bugs, no doubt a good thing. <sigh>

I have been baking - probably a little more than usual, in fact. And I have tried a couple of new things. The photos are all from the past 3 weeks' baking.

Thanks to quarantine, I decided to get out my crusty (but trusty!) 7 years dormant starter and bake some sourdough bread again.  I was really excited to find that there are a number of overnight, mostly no-knead sourdough recipes available now and after trying out a couple of them, I finally settled on my own variation of High Hydration Sourdough from the book Artisan Sourdough Made Simple.

To celebrate the naming of my almost one year old starter John Dough, I decided to make biscuits for the first time.  Because I have just enough discard I am making the biscuits using John Dough’s discards.

I made small adjustments to a recipe from thekitchn.com.

Hello, Friends.

I hope this blog entry finds you all well and your kitchens stocked. This weekend we Falzons, had a zoom family reunion. I setup a prep station and baked while I reminisced. It was a true NYC emigrant extravaganza!  Ravioli brought to NYC by our southern Italian pisani. At the very same time Bialy the not so famous cousin to the well known bagel! Enjoy!

 Post script:

Just wanted to register the results using a stiff levain. I took some of my 100% hydration starter and built the levain in two steps. The first build was also 100% hydration while the second build was a stiff version with hydration around 50%. I think the results have been better than expected based on using AP flour, since it does not have very strong gluten. Let me walk you through the method used:

Ingredients

60 gr stiff levain @ 50% hydration (20 gr water; 40 gr flour)

30 gr whole wheat stone ground flour

30 gr rye

180 gr AP flour