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After years of practice and changing steps to make the process simpler, I think I finally have the classic sourdough loaf down.

Yesterday’s bake 

Had a few experimental mishaps (couldn't generate enough surface tension to get good oven spring, etc) so I needed a win. Made this pumpernickel using the recipe on KAF's website...can't wait to crack into it (my son's already planning to make rubens tomorrow).

took advantage of the cooler weather in New Jersey today and baked  olive rosemary loaves. Smell wonderful 

Here is a simple method for processing leftover starter into a versatile ingredient that can favorably increase the complexity of a bread's flavor profile.  It's a "toadie" in dabrownman's parlance. Perhaps a “cheat” in yours. Ok, it's not strictly altus. It had aspirations to become bread but never got the call.  Hence “Alt”. Here’s the...

What for

Recently, I read some comments on an old discussion topic here about the length of proofing time required for whole grain sourdough bread. Dabrownman mentioned that it is easy to over-proof whole grain bread because of the high bacterial, yeast and enzymatic activities. I wonder if I was letting my bread to proof for too long sometimes such that the oven spring was minimal at times, so I deliberately cut the proofing period by 20 minutes this time to see what its effect would be.

The holiday is over.  It was an awesome 3 week trip to our South Island incorporating a 7 day adventure of 4WD in back country, catching up with relations and exploring parts of the country I had never seen before. 

Fellow Bakers,

I had the opportunity to get some special flour named Ruchmehl, which is used to make a darker bread in Switzerland. It is some sort of half-half wheat flour that provides a darker color to the crumb and nutty flavor. This flour is widely used in Switzerland for their daily bread.

The process was quite standard.

Levain:

10 g starter

50 g Ruchmhel

50 g water

Matured for about 18 hrs, which produced some sour notes to the bread flavor.

Dough:

All levain

245 g Ruchmehl

One of my favorite books on bread is Lionel Vatinet's A Passion for Bread. Ciabatta is a favorite of mine so it only seemed natural to try my hand at his version. I also wanted to see how well my hands would handle this wet dough.

Just getting back to baking after extended Spring vacation in Hawaii. 

600g bread flour

150g Red Fife

150g Kamut

100g AYW levain built using one time feed of flour to AYW and left in warm oven a couple hours. Was VERY active

100g Rye levain- did several builds over a few hours to get my 10g of stored starter active again. Left in warm oven all night. Stirred down the next morning and fed again and left for a few hours. 

550 g total liquid - 300g AYW + 250 H2O ( additional water on counter for s&f approx 50-100 g)