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Last Tuesday was one of thous days where I came back early form work and just had the urge to bake bread. For some time now the guys at work are daring me to produces a good dense rich rye bread. Well time was short and I did not had time for those multi-builds long fermentation formulas. So I figure if am not going to follow a meticulous recipe, I might as well go all the way and prepare it all by feel and sight (and with a few not so traditional additions ). I was very pleased with the result, and so does my co-workers that finished it all up! 

Finding American equivalents or substitutes for foreign ingredients can be quite challenging. Whether you move to Europe, or like me, come to the US from Germany, you naively expect common products like flour or milk to be the same.

Sure, my American whole wheat breads turned out just fine, I was happy that they rose so nicely. But when I tried baking everyday German rolls, Weizenbrötchen, with all-purpose flour (wasn't that for all purposes, after all?) I was in for a surprise.

Just finished baking this miche. This dough is a foray into working with high hydration. After kneading, the dough was still a tad bit sticky, but I decided not to do stretch and folds since I was planning on long, cold fermentation. Used low percentage of yeast because of fermentation time, as well.

It's just out of the oven, so I don't have a crumb shot yet. But I figured I would share the initial results and recipe. Worst part of making a miche is waiting hours before cutting into it.

Formula:

250g KA whole wheat 25%

375g KA bread flour 37.5%

It's been a year or more since I've made Jason's Quick Ciabatta recipe, so I made a variation first and followed the next day with his standard recipe.

For the variation, I mixed Jason's standard 95% hydration dough until it started to climb the mixer paddle.  At that time I added enough flour to make a 75% hydrated dough and retarded it overnight in the fridge. The next day, I shaped, proofed and baked the loaves.

Today, I attended my first farmer's market as a vendor.   Yesterday I baked around three times more bread at one time than I had ever done before.   Miraculously it all came out fine with no kitchen disasters.  This morning I finished up the baking and drove a couple towns over to Carlisle.   I had never been to the Carlisle market before.   I had two reasons for picking it.   One, I figured, given that Carlisle is pretty sparsely populated, that the market might be small enough for me to be able to manage.   The second is tha

Hey all, I made it to double digits.  And can you believe next week is August.  I'll be trading for pumpkins before long.  

So I had a hard time deciding what to make and kinda through this idea together rather fast.  After the Flax Walnut Rye I knew I wanted more Rye.  I got some local Rye from a friend and intended to use it (forgot it at home) so I used my standard house coarse ground Rye.

Where does the time go?  In the considerable time since I last managed to get a post together I have mostly been baking one bread over and over.  So here it is: a big ol’ rye.

After the two bakes of milling farro, whole wheat and spelt for whole grain breads that had sprouts, scalds and seeds in and on them where the milled flour was so beautiful to look at and great to work with at 90-100% hydration, we thought we would do something we rarely do…… make a white bread that had nothing in or on it!

a second photo for my first blog entry.

I found the basic recipe for this bread in Dan Lepard's "The Art of Handmade Bread".....and took a few liberties.

My white flour starter was 16 oz and I added a 1/4 cup of buttermilk, 2 tablespoons of honey and 2/3 cup of shelled pumpkin seeds.   The result was two large loaves of tasty, chewy rustic bread.    Lots of flavors with the rye and barley flour plus the pumpkin seeds inside and outside seem to be a nice addition.

The following worked up to be ~4.5 lbs of dough:

16 oz active white flour starter

1.75 cups water with 1/4 cup buttermilk