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Just made Ken Forkish's 80% biga white last night. This was the best bread I've made yet. Really happy with the results. Great dome; great crumb; wonderful, crackly crust.

This was my schedule:

9 pm: Made biga

8 am: Retarded biga in the fridge, since I had to go to work

7 pm: Took biga out of the fridge to warm it up to room temperature (right now, room temperature is about 78F!)

8 pm: Added the 100 g flour and all the other stuff (made only half the recipe), folded, and let it sit out for about 2.5 hours.

This is the bread we usually eat when I can't make the time to bake sourdough. Usually I bake about 4 loafs of sourdough spelt; and utilize the freezer to keep us eating it throughout the week. If we burn through the sourdough quicker as expected, I usually bake some extra bread with yeast. 

The recipe is pretty simple: 

For two loaves:

500 gr white spelt flour
500 gr whole spelt flour
22 gr salt
14 gr yeast
1 tbsp cocoa powder 
20 gr of syrup (something sweet, maple or rice or aguave)
600 ml tepid water.

Rye flour for dusting

Hi Folks just a couple of pics of this bread that was much admired at work today

The dough was 4kg flour

2 kg Biga (a previously made dough with no salt 2kgs flour 1400ml water 10g yeast set aside in a container in the cool room 36 HRS)

100g salt

100g eggs

120g yeast

2100ml water

1000g roast butternut pumpkin

1000g   brown rice and barley

During a recent expedition to the local Pan-Asian grocery, I came home with 25 lbs of whole wheat atta.  Not knowing from nuthin', I expected it to be a typical whole wheat.  Thank goodness for TFL!  I checked out archived postings on using atta, and one poster had success with using Atta in TomKat's Semolina Filone, as featured in Maggie Glezer's Artisan Baking.  I started with a poolish including both yeast water and about an ounce of liquid levain for flavor and rise.  I didn't get much sour in the final bake, but that's fine with us.

Hi, we have been baking, but not posting lately due to the fact that I had surgery on my right ankle, completing the ankle reconstruction project and any forseeable body restoration!!! So this past week we just made "bread" ... Barb made her Tartine bread, Helen Sourdough and I made a Buttermilk bread from a new cookbook we are cruising through "Baking with Julia"... Tomorrow we are baking our Christmas Cakes to set aside to mellow for the holidays... time to get that going...

Marcus (wassisname) mentioned in a recent post that his favorite "aromatherapy bread" of late was a 20% rye with raisins and dried coriander. I was intrigued by the flavor combination. I love cilantro (aka coriander) and grow it in my garden. It's one of the few things that seems to grow well. I tend to let it bolt and go to seed, but I think the tiny white flowers are pretty so I don't fret over it. I like adding the flowers to my salads.

Greetings lovely bready friends:)

It has been almost 12 months since I did a blog post.

I moved from a city of 2 million to a town of 16,000 (at peak times) ...

We lived in a house for the first 7 months (after our house purchase fell through) that had an oven from hell.

Looked like a dream BUT no!! So no baking, in fact limited cooking went on as well:(

We finally found a house we liked enough to buy after 7 months looking BUT the oven is not great...

Its ok, but not at all really a bread oven, hence bread and yeasty things have been scarce.

Several months ago I took a risk and plunged. I opened a microbakery focusing on central European-style breads... in Cambodia, Southeast Asia. Crazy, ain’t it? Prior to that, I was just an amateur baker, with a mediocre office job, who was obsessed with sourdough.

Anyway, during the last 2 weekends I sold my breads at a local craft market. So far we haven’t done too well, but before I get into details let’s fill you in on what we’ve been doing to stay afloat.

Caution: Photos of delicious German food ahead.

I love any bread made with Durum flour so I figured it would be a good idea to combine some fresh ricotta cheese along with a Durum starter and a porridge made with rolled oats and pearled barley.