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I continue to work with multi-grain sourdough breads using home-milled flours. Today, I baked two loaves. Both used the same dough, a mix of Central Milling ABC flour, whole Sirvinta wheat, Spelt and Rye. The Sirvinta whole wheat is the thirstiest I have ever encountered. For today's bake, I boosted the dough hydration to 85% with good results.

I mixed the doughs for each loaf separately and folded in 20% each dried cranberries and lightly toasted pecans in one of the doughs.

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Recently, my loaves have not been fully up to scratch – a bit spready on the peel, poor loft and poor ears.

My starter seemed to be performing OK, but sometimes with starters, who knows? I’m not the sort of baker who would cherish a 100 year old starter, so time to try a new one!

Happy New Year to All...

I have not posted very much but my first bake in 2019 was using 50% Strong White Marriages combined with 50% Swiss Ruchmehl that I ordered before Christmas from a supplier in Germany.

I don't know much about this flour but it was so smooth during baking and tastes a bit like a Pain the Campagne with a rustic taste... 

Love to experiment with different flours and would buy this again, if available in UK. Never mind... Kat

Hello,

Do you prefer to sift your fresh milled flour? What would be the main reasons to do so or not?

This bake is about 50% bread flour mixed with 50% non-sifted fresh milled whole wheat and rye. The hydration is 68% with 18% fermented flour. No autolyse, 5.5 hours bulk fermentation and 5 hours in the fridge after shaping. Baked out of the fridge on a cold pot and cold oven. In general I am pleased with the result and the crumb is soft and aerated. Mind you that I milled the grain in the blender, so the flour is kind of coarser than commercial.

Here are the top 100 ETFs over the last 10 years based in average yearly returns

The top 25 returned more than 15% annual returned and the bottom 25 returned more than !0.5%

It must have been a good year! T65, which passes for bread flour here, has usually maxed out at around 11% protein. A few months ago, I found a bag at 12% and felt as though I'd struck gold. Well, I must have hit the mother lode, because this new T65 organic flour clocks in at 13%! So I bought a 2.5-kilo bag of it and have been happy as a clam.

Another recent find was heritage/heirloom stone-ground T80. I believe that T80 would pass for "high extraction" flour in the States; at any rate, it's got 11% protein. It has a lovely color and perfume.

One of my Christmas gifts this year was several pounds of barley and of oats to feed my home milling habit.  After noodling around here on TFL and the web, I cobbled together a formula to use some barley flour.  

Ingredients 

400g whole wheat flour, freshly milled

400g whole barley flour, freshly milled

400g all purpose flour 

5g malted grain (I used malted barley)

900g water

60g honey

24g salt

10g active dry yeast

Process

My biggest challenge is scoring my loaves.  I never ever get all 4 small (500gm) loaves scored properly.  I remember reading  that a guy who worked full time in a bakery said it took him a full year to get the scoring right.  Today for once (in 4 years) I got all 4 right.  Crumb shot to follow (after dinner... lol)... Apologies for this small brag... Next time I'll be back at 50 or 75%... today I"m happy

hester

My dear wife doesn’t like stuff in her bread.  No nuts, no seeds, no nuthin’.  For Lucy that is like missing out on some important bread flavor but it is better than not baking bread at all.  Still, Lucy was ready to come up with a bread for the dear one since she took Lucy to the Vet yesterday and came home with some kind of pills to help her recover from being stroked out.

Sourdough Bagels

(adapted from Hamelman's bagel formula in Bread)

David M. Snyder

January 2, 2019