Blog posts

Bake bread.

Debra Wink, God bless her, is helping me recover from the loss of my seed starter. In the meantime, because we're out of sourdough loaves--the freezer, at this moment, only holds two baguettes, and some hamburger size soft baps--I've baked my favorite sourdough 10/45/45 Rye/Bread Flour/AP Flour, 68% Hydration converted to a 12 hour sponge, with commercial yeast prefermenting 20% of the formula's flour. I'm not giving up on sourdough, but I have to say, "This bread is tasty!"

Sending this to Yeastspotting.

Index for my blog entries: http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/24437/blog-index-will-keep-updating-and-linking-it

My favorite 36 hours Sourdough baguette and its many variations:

Yesterday I was researching various rye bread formulas and techniques trying to come up with something I could make with what I have on hand (dark rye flour and from a sour dough culture). I was thinking of a Jewish or a German Rye. The Bread Baker's Apprentice was a little help but still didn't have a formula to go on. Several years ago a friend (he was the head baker in the first bakery I use to work at) gave me his formulas, study guides and notes from when he attended Dunwoody Institute back in the early 1960's.

Hello,
Franko was travelling in Europe recently, and thoughtfully sent me a gift from Vienna, Austria - an organic rye bread baking mix, called Holzofenbrot Backmischung (translates to: woodstove breadbaking mix).
To say that I was tremendously pleased with this, would be an understatement!
Thanks again, so much, Franko, for your kindness and generosity!

Here is the bread, baked from the mix. It looked like the mix had a good amount of rye in it, and some bread spice (brotgewurze). I tried scoring before proofing, as we were taught in my recent Guild class.

A few years back I was testing English muffin recipes on TFL.  After I posted a recipe I received a comment from Dan Lepard who provided a recipe for excellent English muffins.  The other day I decided to give the recipe another try.  The only thing I changed was a couple of stretch and folds at 20 minute intervals after the dough came out of the refrigerator, after reaching room temperature.  This is a really good recipe which produces a light, flavorful muffin, and it's easy to make.  They take about 7 minutes per side on a medium low grill or in a

Light work week has given me time to bake at home.  First batch was the 1,2,3 formula again and then I did a sour dough baguette batch for today.  Here are the results:

Tuesday:

And then today:

Hi All,

I am making Russian rye bread that has aproximately 50 % whole rye starter 83% hydrated.  My problem is that it is to sour and the top split before I even baked.  I think that the yeast % is to high and it has fermented to long.  I am using high gluten flour and all but 7 % of the rye flour is prefermented.  Also does anyone know what S500 does in a a bread dough?  It is a preservative and would it change the overall texture?  Any feedback would be appreciated.

Gena

As I said in my first blog entry, I made a new WW sourdough for the friend, this time with CORRECT amount of salt. And this is how it came out.

 …..with a better ear…..