Blog posts

A commuter-friend travelling with me to London on the train used to live in Ravensburg, in a region in Germany called Oberschwaben.

One day he told me he really misses a speciality from there called Seelen.

They are rolls with an open crumb and a slightly chewy crust, sprinkled with caraway and coarse salt.

Searching the internet I found a number of recipes, and some descriptions of the "original": a roll made with spelt, using high hydration, long fermentation, and a wet, hot bake.

Sending this to Yeastspotting.

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Phew, it has been a busy holiday, and just turned into an even busier Janurary. Still baking a ton though, here are some stuff I have baked during the holiday but didn't get to post about before.

This is an continuation of the last multi-grain SD bake except that the hydration is slightly lower at 68%, the multi-grain flours were 54 %, the add in goodies are increased substantially since this bread has multi-grain sprouts to go with the multi-grain soaker and we also have pumpkin and sunflower seeds, as well as, pistachio and filbert nuts with a hint of prunes too.

Baked at midnight! 12 hour pre-ferment, 2.5 hour bulk ferment, 3 folds in the first hour, 1 hour proof.  425 oven * (see below):  30 minutes covered, 15 uncovered .

The aroma after 30 minutes in the oven was incredible! - like browned butter.  I almost slept in kitchen.

I exercised great restraint and waited until morning to try it. The crust is more on the chewy side, as is the crumb.

Hello everyone,

I saw a beautiful post on stirthepots.com last February – 
Jeremy’s lovely take on a Swedish seed bread (Svenska frö bröd).
The ‘mosaic of a crumb’ Jeremy described; all those beautiful seeds! That bread looked so, so good.
It took me awhile to look up his friend Martin’s blog, and bake this bread – I’m so glad I did! - here's a slice... :^)

Sometimes I love to do something different when shaping a loaf of bread.  All 3 of my children took Irish Step dancing lessons for quite some time so I am partial to most things Celtic.  When I saw instructions for shaping dough into a Celtic knot I knew I had to give it a go.

I can't find a supplier to make multigrain bread. I need a multigrain mix to add to dough. How can I do it myself?

When I first began baking sourdough I followed the experts formulae to the letter. Most prescribed 2% salt. Frankly, I was disappointed with most of the mostly (or entirely) White Flour formulae, especially those that included up to 10% Whole Wheat flour in the mix. They were too bland for our palettes. Along the way I discovered overnight hydration, at cool temperatures, developed both flavor and the desired crumb.

Found an interesting article on some research and development.

In The Battle Between Health and Taste

Hope you enjoy. :)

After my shopping spree at a local grain mill yesterday, I was in the mood to experiment with some different flours.  I had some left over buttermilk in the fridge from my Danish Rye bake so I decided to make my (ever popular in these parts) buttermilk pancakes but with organic spelt flour.  I was a bit on the careful side and opted to still keep 1/2 cup AP flour in the recipe.  These turned out so well that next time I might even eliminate the AP flour all together.  As a note, the apple topping pairs VERY well with these so don't omit if you have a choice.