Blog posts

I woke up this morning determined to make a batch of chocolate biscuits for my late morning cuppa. 

Read full recipes and intructions on my blog here 

Sourdough Honey Whole Wheat with Multi-grain Soaker 

May 17, 2013

This is my third version of a whole wheat, multi-grain bread based on my San Francisco-style Sourdough formula. I think this one is a keeper.

Compared to the last version:

1. The soaker was hydrated at 100% rather than 125%. Also, it was soaked for less than an hour rather than overnight. This resulted in a very sticky, slack dough but not a goopy one. It behaved like a 75-80% hydration dough, generally.

I had a try on Tartine country bread on Friday night. I saw many videos on youtube about Tartine bread. And I'm curious about the tartine method, high hydration, long time fermentation, with little starter portion. The doughs in those videos are jiggling and the crumb is airy, which attracts me. So I decide to have a try.

Recipe adapted from txfarmer's chinese blog:

levain:

Starter 7.5g (mature)

whole wheat flour 50g(I replace 30g with whole rye flour)

bread flour 50g

water 100g

Temperature: 25C

With our daughter coming home tonight we thought home made pizza was in order since she loves it more than taking final exams at college.  We had built a YW levain for it on Monday and stuck it in the fridge to chill till this morning. To give it a boost we also made a 120 g, 100% hydration poolish this morning.  Both were ready to go to work in 4 hours of warm up and ferment

I did bake a lot of bread in the past week, but nothing impressive...not sure what my problem was. The weather was a lot cooler so I did have to play around with the proofing times but nothing was really right. I did make sourdough rye with light rye flour yesterday, which was my first experience using any rye other than whole rye. I was pleased with that but I got a little carried away with the seeds in it. I liked it but I think i would have to tone it down for others. Today I made bagels.

More photos on our Facebook page (Carbondale Community Oven) and website (carbondalecommunityoven.weebly.com)

A couple of people asked me for bread books recommendations, so I thought I’d do a series of review of the books I own, starting from the very first bread book I ever bought – “Bread:baking by hand of bread machine” by Eric Treuille.

This is a great book, and looking at it now writing this review, I am realising how many more recipes I want to try from it.

Wow--it's been 2 years since we wrote in this blog to ask for advice.  Now, we have a true community oven in Carbondale, Colorado, in which we have been baking for almost two years.  This summer, a beautiful new community garden will surround our Oven, bringing more bakers, tasters and excitement to the site.  Many folks have contacted us for advice on building their own ovens.  Also, local farmers have stepped up to grow wheat in our valley, like their parents and grandparents did 100 years ago-- and we are purchasing a grinder to process it.

This week I baked 2 new loaves, both multigrain.

One is Mark Sinclair's Multigrain, nearly 50% WW + multigrain soaker. Very good!

The other is, 60/40 Farro Spezzato by Mike Zakowski, with 10% cracked wheat (I didn't have cracked spelt).

Very happy with both, especially for so much WW.

Husband says the 60/40 may be favorite so far :)

ML