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It has been a considerable blot of time since my regularly featured Italian enriched doughs were frequently demonstrated. I am out of practice, and in need to validate my reputation, even if to myself but not only that but to exceed where I recognised the faults. Now armed with a new bit of kit, the Hanna “Bread and Dough” pH meter, I wanted to go deeper where such tracking was once a novel endeavour, the time had come to up my game as it were.

This is the third time I’ve bake this formula I first put together for the semolina CB.  I hadn’t baked it since that time and wanted to try it out again.  I finally received my new pH meter, the Hanna bread and dough model and used it for the first time for this bake.  I’ll know how it worked out when I finally slice this open, I will say I was surprised at how little a rise in the aliquot jar corresponded with the pH readings at which other well known bakers follow.  Now of course, pH will vary greatly based on the hydration and flour composition of the dough.

To continue the story of milk/sandwich bread, I decided to change it all up, and tried using semolina in the dough, to finally add an egg, increase the hydration (~70%), and do a double rise. Also made two loaves, but each was much smaller. Due to scheduling, I had to do a long retard too. Here is the formula: https://fgbc.dk/1moj

Starting All Over Again

I've been hit by a mystery starter affliction. The starter, levain and dough would rise well and in a timely manner. But when the dough went into the oven, loft and oven spring were poor.

June 9, 2021.

So I've been playing a lot with stone-ground WW durum. It makes great flatbread/chapatis at 100%, and great egg-less noodles at 50% mixed with 50% Golden Temple white/red bag durum.

I wrote somewhere, that anything over 33% WW durum in a leavened loaf bread just doesn't seem to be workable.  It becomes a brick, or a rubbery sponge.

Mariana mentioned that there is a popular Russian flour mix that uses 25% durum, so I thought I'd play with that number.

Plan:

I made these a while ago and thought to post them to my blog during our 4th COVID lockdown (bored). I learned how to make these during Chef Jacob Burton’s online culinary boot camp.  I learned the bun sizes for large, regular and slider buns.

155 g each for large (4.5 inch) buns - about 114 mm

100 g each for regular size (4 inch) buns - about 100 mm

55 g each for slider size (3 inch) buns - about 76 mm

A well-formed bun was baked using foil ring molds held together with a couple of staples.

Hello, friends.

Live flour incapsulation Experiment, Phase one.

 Italian La Molisana "00" DI GRANO TENARO 75% and il Molino Durum Wheat Fine Semolina. @ 75% and 25% respectively. 2 x Epi's out of the oven now and what a great day to have it on too! This is a 5 hour bulk fermentation using just 1% compressed yeast, it did finish at the desired dough temperature but did loose a bit of temperature during BF but was quite happy Final proving in the back of the station wagon which was quite a bit warmer than the house! i am very pleased with the results from these longer fermented doughs.

Hi, my most-recent sourdough bake resulted in (with an apology to the real things) hockey pucks. The dough was clearly over proofed after a 10 hour or so overnight proof.

Followed the usual FWSY recipe for overnight 40% WW bread.

My kitchen's usually in the mid 60s F in the winter, and is now running in the mid 70s.

Should I use less leavain?

Colder water for the mix?

Thanks!