Blog posts

I don't know about you guys, but last week wore me out. I'm just now recovering and have the energy to recap :)

Here's the last week or so of production. The struan I kept, everything else went on Thursday.

Hi all.   Cruising around the various forums and recipes and I see an ingredient ' 1 bottle of soft butter'.    I live in northern Illinois USA and here we have butter in sticks, tubs and by the pound.   What is bottled butter and how much butter is in the bottle?   And where does one find this item?  And can melted & cooled butter be used in place of 'bottled butter'?  I'm 'fused here...   Thanks in advance to one and all!    Joey the Doeyo 

I have learned a lot about my oven this fall.  One of the most important things I learned, though, I just confirmed this weekend with this bake.  I have feared since I finished the insulation layer that my oven was too thin-walled to hold enough heat for multiple bakes.  I also suspected that perhaps I just was not "charging the heat battery" fully enough to make it last.  This weekend was a test of this theory.

I don't usually call it anything other than sourdough, but when I'm trying to be clever I call it SoF (State of Franklin) Sourdough. 

95% BF, 5% Whole Rye, 72% Hydration. 1/3 total flour(including all of the Rye) in 100% hydration levain.

The crust is softer than I'd like, but I'm hoping a new oven will fix that. 

Just a quick post - a basic wholemeal bread, lovely texture and mild sourdough flavour - that one is a keeper

As always, more photos and recipe on my blog here

Rudolph's antlers; Pepernoten versus kruidnoten

I didn’t have time to get creative this week so I flipped through Hamelman’s Bread and settled on the 40% rye with caraway seeds.  The only significant change I made was to leave out the yeast.  The rye sour (all of the rye flour is prefermented) raised the bread just fine on its own, it just took longer.

Leavened white bread.
12-hour leaven baked bread. Beautiful exterior and delicate interior.
I changed so much leaven, that I spelled it with a spoon of flour.
Very nice baked in an earthen vessel.

Sourdough Sandwich Bread

made with homegrown starter

1 cup starter at 100%

1 cup water

1 egg

2 T. EVOO

1 cup Prairie Gold White Whole Wheat

2 cups AP unbleached flour

1 teaspoon diastatic malt powder

1 T. dough enhancer

1 T. whey powder

2 T. non fat dry milk

1/4 cup potato flakes

Mix everything in the breadmachine on the dough cycle

takes about 1 and 1/2 hours, let rest in pan for 20 minutes

after dough cycle finishes.