Blog posts

Sometimes things don’t work as planned, so it is good to have a plan B just in case.  Having a pullman pan lined with parchment or a focaccia tray ready is always a good idea if your dough doesn’t seem to be developing the way it should during bulk.  That is what happened today to this dough, it just seemed much wetter and looser than I recall when I made this recipe a year ago.  I’m pretty sure I didn’t measure incorrectly so I wonder if the flours have just absorbed quite a bit of the moisture from the air lately as it has been humid.

To learn more about concentrated lactic acid sourdough (CLAS), please see here and here. 

This is very loosely based on the recipe from Modernist Cuisine. I found myself searching for variations and I was pleasantly surprised to find a few solid contenders, including a great looking Chocolate Sourdough Noir on the Clever Carrot website. One of the websites copied Modernists recipe, almost getting it right except for one pretty major goof. Instead of 1/8 tsp of active dry yeast, the writer listed 8 grams - a heaping tsp. And dummy that I am, that was the recipe I used.

As I mentioned in comments over the last few days a couple of times, I was making a CLAS starter. In case some people missed Yippee's posts about it, CLAS stands for "concentrated lactic acid sourdough", and it's just like a regular starter - except it doesn't have yeast, only LABs. I made it using whole rye flour, diastatic malt powder, a little vinegar, water by inubating at ~40°C, where LABs are happy, but yeast are suppressed. Vinegar creates a low pH to prevent growth of unwanted bacteria. Access to oxygen is also restricted with the same purpose.

Dear Kristida:  The ingredients look wonderful.  What is the rest of the recipe?  thanks, Lee

Made 2 versions of molasses bread before making others this last 2 weeks or so. One with toasted walnuts and one with drunken raisins - accidentally soaked the raisins in whiskey instead of rum, resulting in puffy, pretty strong tasting drunken raisins. Must make mistakes like this more often!

Molasses Bread
Makes 1 loaf
160°C/180°C 40 - 50 minutes or until the internal temperature reaches 88-95°C

as of 30 Oct 2022 [edited to change my fermentation temperature from 40°C to 37°C)

For this bake I followed the recipe that Melissa shared on Breadtopia.com a couple of years ago.  It has been on my list to bake for a long time after having made a yeasted version a long while ago.  A couple of challenges I had on this bake was using my niece’s starter which needs some work to boost and then baking in my in laws’ oven.  However, despite the very slow fermentation the end result is really good.  

For one loaf 9x4” Pullman pan 

Ingredients

Sweet Stiff Starter 

• 53g bread flour