Blog posts

I made a bread not that long ago using pecan meal in the porridge which came out great so I wanted to try another version and bump up the flavor profile a bit.  The addition of the smoked cheddar cheese I bought on my recent trip to Vermont really makes this an amazing bread.

I also used some freshly milled whole wheat and rye flour in the levain and in the main dough.  I grated the cheese coarsely this time, but you can also cube it instead.

Give this one a try if you can and you won't be disappointed.

1/1/2015 - New Years Eve Pizza

1/2/2015 - 50 % Whole Grain Sprouted 8 Grain SD/YW with Japanese Black Rice & Seeds

1/9/2015 - 50 Percent Whole Sprouted 16 Grain SD with Lake Havasu Desert Magic IPA

After Abe’s recent success with his new yeast water, Lucy went looking for our cherry YW in the back of the fridge where it has been neglected for months.  Plus, I was bit shaken with Lucy’s latest attempts to make all of us redundant and nothing shakes the Lucy Blues she creates with her computer apps as much as a nice jar of cherry yeast water.  It was time to give it some refreshment.

Lucy tried to find the last time we used dates in bread and it was 2012.  We prefer figs to dates because you don’t have to pit them and they taste better but dates in bread have been around for thousands of years and not to be overlooked.

Sourdough Fermentation Data

We all know that all other factors being the same, the more sourdough starter in the dough, the faster the rise during bulk fermentation.

 Since your starter may resemble dough (60 to 70% hydration), others may use a liquid starter (200%+ hydration), and mine is the consistency of mashed potatoes (100% hydration), The percent of flour used in the starter (as percent of total flour) is unaffected by hydration. This is a concept I’ve seen in print somewhere and one I find very useful.

First time post. Kamut is such an amazing flour to work with and eat. The depth of flavour, subtle sweetness and tender crumb has me absolutely hooked. Now I just need to find someone who will sell it to me in large quantities!! I loosely follow the recipe from Chad's Tartine Book 3. I don't add the wheat germ and my starter is my own 50/50 white and wholemeal 100% mix.

As the porridge bread received the thumbs up from the parental unit, I thought I'd have another crack at it for this week's bake. With sound advice in my head and a better sense of timing than starting to make bread at stupid o'clock in the evening, I set to it. I started out with the same recipe, scaled it up by half to give me two medium loaves and made a few minor tweaks to the ingredients, namely ditching the dried active yeast entirely, swapping the spelt in the soaker for wholegrain rye and reducing the water in the dough.

Soaker:

113g porridge oats

These steps are the ones I follow to make my daily bread.  There is always (a) a starter being fed, (b) a bowl with dough or batter in it on the counter, and (c) a basket or two in the fridge, in my kitchen. 

Can someone tell me which of these steps is unneeded or even harmful to the production of great bread?  I would appreciate any tweaks or deletions or additions that might be suggested. 

The Steps

Pour starter from its vessel into my bowl.

Add lukewarm water and AP flour to make a batter.

Let that sit for a few hours or overnight.

I'm working with a friend who is launching a new food product made with the liquid strained off oat meal that has been soaked overnight and then pureed and strained. The end result is a fairly thick paste made of ground oats - probably not quite 100% hydration, but pretty high.

I'd like to find some way to use the "waste" as an addition to sourdough bread. Any suggestions? Dabrownman, that sounds like something you might have tried...

It's more or less a "soaker" that has been strained.

Thanks for your advice!

Gail N-K

Summer has been interesting, bread-baking-wise. I went for a largely disastrous stretch trying to make higher-hydration, relatively slack doughs into bread because moisture seemed to be the key to wonderful artisan loaves. (You will note that none of those have been posted, and for good reason!) And the heat and humidity necessitated several changes to the way I feed and process my doughs, because we only use the air-conditioner as a last resort. It'll be nice when autumn really takes hold!