Blog posts

They say it takes a village to raise a child. It also takes a village - a village of Fresh Loafers - to raise my bread.

Things were going swimmingly until one day, my starter had an identity crisis. But it wasn't that simple, because it was a secret identity crisis. My starter culture, which consisted of purely rye, was rising beautifully after each refreshing...3.5x in 10 hours. It was so airy that beyond the water float test, it looked like it might fly.

I have not posted for a while but thought id share some bread that was made today , I was using up some stout that I had opened and I also used up the wholemeal flour that I had, it was intended to be 50% but it ended up a bit more than that. same goes for the stout where I used 420mls and 160ml s of water. I soaked the w/m in all the liquid and had chores to attend to. I weighed up the rest of the ingredients so that I could add them upon my return.

Hey everyone, 

It's a long weekend here and I am glad am able to report back on my baguette baking journey. First of all, I would like to thank Alan (Alfanso) for taking the time and guided me to baking Bouabsa's Baguette. I must admit I got a little lost along the translation when going through the formula. And out of curiosity, went to Youtube and search for some visual guidance and bing.....here comes Alan with his comprehensive video, bravo Alan. Should have told me earlier : )

I had a few things that I wanted to experiment with this week:

     - using a stiff (66% hydration) levain instead of a liquid (100% hydration) levain

     - using a whole wheat levain instead of all rye

     - changing the timing for using the levain to waiting until it had peaked and fallen for a couple of hours and then retarding in the fridge for a day or so

This weekend's baking project comes to you courtesy of pantry leftovers!

So I asked the wife what dried fruit we had on hand. We have cherries in the fridge and raisins in the pantry. The raisins sport a 'best sold by' date of Oct. last year, so I thought it might be best to use those up. Nearby I spied some walnuts. Then I Googled for a recipe and came across this lovely...

Country Sourdough with Walnuts + Raisins

Total Flour – 100% - 560G

Total Liquid - 64% - 360G

Mother:

100% Hydration Whole Wheat starter.  480G

(Flour Red W.W. – 240G, /Water 240G)

Finale Dough:

Flour White W.W.  – 320G

Whole Milk – 120G

Butter – 60G

Honey – 40G

1 egg – 54 G

Salt – 8 G

Procedure: 

This was a crazy week and Lucy is about as happy as I have ever seen her.  There was so much new, interesting and good news fr where we live it was just amazing.  I have to admit that I am pretty well walking on clouds myself.

I've been baking rye sourdoughs over the last few days, for a special customer request. They turned out fairly nice, but I still have challenges with my rye starter staying strong enough to rise the bread properly. As a result some of them were a bit dense and wet (unlike the previous rye bake, where they rose nicely; not sure where the difference lies). Still fairly happy with them. From left to right they are:

Last week I posted my first run of the Hamelman Vermont SD as baguettes.  Quite happy with the results.  But a recent thread started by ifaey about problems with higher protein baguettes had me rethinking my own run.