Blog posts

After my first attempt to bake bread in my hooded BBQ I had several issues to address.  Most critical was the fact that the gas hose had touched the body of the grill and partially melted! So I ordered a new one and a second grate.  These arrived this week so yesterday I repeated the previous bake, substituting rye for spelt.

12 December - refresh starter and build levain before going to bed

13 December

08:25 am autolyse 105 g freshly milled whole wheat, 50 g freshly milled rye 440 g flour + 10 g gluten flour and 400 g water.

A staple of traditional Italian delis, it's surprisingly hard to find a quality recipe for Italian Prosciutto Bread online, also known as Lard Bread. This is a bread loaded to the brim with thick, cubed prosciutto, adding in parmesan and lots of black pepper for extra flavor, and brushed with prosciutto fat for tenderness and a beautiful gloss. While this is not a pretty looking bread by any means, it is uncontrollably delicious: you won't be able to stop eating it. This recipe is adapted from numerous others.

White with WW, Semolina and Rye

One of my TFL friends expressed concern that I had not posted for awhile. I can reassure him and you all that I am well and baking as much as ever. The thing is I have settled on a few favorite breads (if "a few" is less than ten), and I have already posted about all of them at least once. 

This weekend I baked something old and something new, so I have an excuse to report that to which I have been up.

This was a beet sourdough with 36% roasted beet, 25% Hard Red Winter Redeemer, 5% rye, and 70% KABF. The hydration was 70% + the liquid from the beets. I did a 2 hour autolyse and let the bulk go for 6 hours (kitchen was 64 degrees). The oven spring was fine, but maybe the bulk could have gone shorter. Interestingly I made a leek loaf simultaneously and those loaves had huge oven spring. Maybe the beets sped up the fermentation? 

The crumb isn't super open, but I think it's fair for a vegetable loaf. 

With cold weather settling in I'm spending more time baking.  I decided to make some whole wheat bread inspired by Tartine's version. It has about 60% whole wheat, 10% whole spelt and 30% all purpose unbleached flours. It has about 83% hydration and I added 5% wheat germ. 10% levain was used and I overnight-ed the loaves in the fridge for about 15 hours. Baked at 450 for 20 lid on and 20 with lid off - great oven spring.

I realized that I’ve been less experimental in baking recently. Today, cheesy herby bread is making a strong comeback!

Blue Stilton Tarragon SD with Sprouted Quinoa & Buckwheat

Goals: 2.25 pound dough, 1027 g.  75% whole grain hard white spring wheat (Prairie Gold), 25% King Arthur All Purpose, 85% hydration, 10% prefermented flour,  2% salt.  Make a 88% hydration soaker with the coarse home-milled Prairie Gold, but not the AP flour.

1027 / 1.87 = 549 g total flour.     549 * .85 = 466 g total water.   549 * .02 = 11 g salt.

549 * .10 = 55 g flour in levain.   100% hydration levian :  55 g water in levain : 110 g total levain.

Levain is all HWSW, Prairie Gold.

10th TFL bake. Dec. 2, 2019.

Holiday bread gifts.  Basically a 1-2-3  rye,ww, bread