Blog posts

Took a formula that Ian had posted some time back and made a few changes . He made enriched buns as did I but I had 750 grams leftover so shaped a batard and pinched the bottom with flour in the crack hoping for a burst of creativity !  I got it. 

700g starter- 600g rye and 100g AYW 

600 g unbleached KA bread flour

225g durum

200g spring wheat 

100g soft cheese ( I used Délice de Bourgogne with the blooming crust pulled off) 

100g soft butter

85 g maple syrup

32 g salt

approx 650g water 

To those who tried to follow my write up, my apologies.  I have added a new comment further down in that post following alfanso's comments.   I hope this gives an easier read than the original post.  Also added a dropbox link to my spreadsheet. 

If you had the patience to wade through the original post, thank you.  It was hard to know how to write it up and with hindsight I should have gone with the dropbox link at the start. but, we live and learn, and I still have much to learn.

Leslie

Following on from my last experimental day inspired by Mariana, today's bake built on that but also heavily influenced by Trevor's book Crumb Mastery which I am presently re-reading. 

I've officially retired Louis I (i.e. unceremoniously dumped him into the trash). He was smelling like a prison distillery by the end. Fortunately, one of his offspring (Louis IV) has taken over as my go-to wheat starter.

Since getting home from the holidays I've been busily baking bagels, brioche, and boules. Also pizza. 

I hate wasting food. I love making bread. I use mainly sourdough starter to do this, but I hate tossing out the "spent" starter. How can it be "spent" since it contains enough critters to get the next batch going?

Cranberry Feta Sourdough

The first time I tried Maurizio's 50-50 I added figs and pecans and had an unusual experience with: shaping as baguettes / retarding / unretarding / reshaping the three as one batard / and finally retarding again.  All documented here.  

She was back for yesterday’s bake and all seemed well enough until the dough went completely missing at the 1 ½ hour mark into the final counter proof.  It is a short story so I will tell it and it is all Lucy’s fault if you ask me. I’m looking at her right now and she looks very guilty to me.

My grandmother's iron skillets make the best pizza. They are from the 1800's. They are 12" across. We have family getting in later tonight so I made these up so they will have something yum when they get here. Crust is somewhat of a guess and by golly as my Mom used to say. I had a couple levains left in containers and decided to clear them out. They were full of bubbles...one durum and one ww.

Here it is the middle of the week and Lucy is nowhere to be found claiming she semi-retired and only works for the Friday bakes not Tuesday bakes.  I told her I was totally retired and would help her in a pinch and she wanted to know when was the last time I baked her any dog biscuits.