Recently I baked Abel's pain au Levain baguettes and included a Ziggy. Which sadly didn't not spring open and grigne at me. Wrong combination of too high a hydration and too much AP flour. Well, can't have that.
Across the board these have not been my most attractive bakes, but they've gotten the job done. It's also been interesting to try a lot of new recipes and to use some different flours as I'm now away from home and without my MockMill. I wanted to share the recipes I used in case anyone else is looking for some new recipes.
We are all seeing how flour is harder to come by lately with the pandemic and everyone baking. So, when I went to one of my go to places for organic flours here in Toronto I picked up more than I usually do including some Einkorn which I’ve never tasted or baked with on a whim. I then found an instagram post of Kirsten’s Full Proof Baking that had some einkorn in it and decided to give it a go.
100% hydration levain - 1:1:1 6 hours @ 78ºF
Levain need 97 g 100% hydration
40 g starter
40 g water
40 g whole wheat flour
Just as well we have our starters!
So my isolation bubble shrunk a week ago when Swiss family members could finally catch a flight home. So I baked last week, an ok bake but I am having trouble getting decent oven spring. This week I thought, ok try the other flour, a different supermarket brand that a friend had dropped off. Secondly, have yet another go at baking in my hooded BBQ.
So, Bread #1 - a simple mixed flour loaf with 14% kamut, 10% homemilled spelt and 10% home milled rye and 84% hydration.
My last blog entry was back in November 2019...right at the end of the world as we knew it. This new way, this surreal reality with it's need for self-isolation, self-distancing, economic and social shut down under the ravages of a global pandemic is our present and our future until the hope of a vaccine/treatment is realized. Everything is different, we struggle to adapt to the new world order and way of doing things in order to survive, fear and anxiety are the underlying emotions of the day, hope is the what keeps us going.
My kids keep telling me to "stop with the bread". I tell them I'm Italian and like carbs. They shrug and walk away...
I made Robertson's 70% whole wheat bread for us and two traditional Tartine loaves for family. I'll have ours on Sunday for Easter dinner and provide the crumb shot then. Considering these were same day bakes (ie no overnight retard) I'm pleased with them. I suspect the one of the traditional loaves are a bit under-proofed but I'm not sure. I need to work on creating a sharper ear too..
A great read from Bill Buford, The New Yorker - https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/04/13/baking-bread-in-lyon
Not a bread, but something to do with it when you've baked too much! I stumbled on a nice recipe for panade from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall at The Guardian. This bread-based stew is a vegetarian favorite that I'd somehow never heard of. With extra sourdough baguettes lying around, no ideas for dinner, and a fortuitously-purchased head of cabbage in the fridge, panade seemed like the right thing to do.
Hey guys! First time bread maker here, been working on a sourdough starter and I’m currently on day 3 of feeding, just wondering if it looks normal! I fed it about 4 hours ago it the band around the bottle is where it was after feeding.
Lately I've been enjoying the freedom to bake on a more... open... schedule, and I've been trying some combinations of techniques I've learned from a book or two and the supremely knowledgeable members of this forum. For sandwiches I love nothing more than piling tasty fillings atop a tasty baguette, so I thought I'd try using my levain to bake baguettes for the first time. Unfortunately I don't have a stone big enough for two-footers so I had to truncate these down to "baton" length.
