Blog posts

When I was a little kid, when parents want to show off how good their kids were in spelling (it's a double-edged sword actually for it is also often used when you want to give someone a hard time :D), they will make them spell "Czechoslovakia." Being so foreign sounding and with a peculiar arrangement of consonants for our eyes and ears, it was really difficult for kids in this side of the world to spell and really shows how good they were in actually "memorizing" letters for the correct spelling.

It’s been so long since I made this bread that I forgot how delightful it is.  My initial go-to instinct was to build a 125% AP levain and then run a most reliable Hamelman Vermont SD.  This, after waltzing with Maurizio’s Cinnamon Raisin SD baguettes and my Sesame Semolina baguettes.  Intermixed with learning the tricks of the trade re: croissants, pain au chocolate, pain aux raisins and some cinnamon buns with raisins and walnuts.  Still work to be done on all fronts there.

No. You didn’t read that wrong. This bake was inspired by the delicate, melt-in-your-mouth biscuits from Macau. I had no intention to put almonds or seaweed in the dough at first. Yet when the grains were being milled, the aroma of roasted nuts filled the kitchen. It totally blew my mind! Ahem, I came so close to adding pork floss to the dough. 

Macau Almond Cookie SD

I just wanted a convenient searchable reference for this figure.  How much sodium per gram of salt?

393.4 mg of sodium in 1 g (gram) salt.

according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_chloride

Well, it sure has.  Thanksgiving has come and gone and so has Christmas.  The photo above is a very white SD Chacon of 7% rye and the rest KA bread flour at 78% hydration using 15 g of long stored Rye NMNF starter  -that was lurking at least 4 months in the bottom of the fridge.

Well after thinking about this for a while, and finally getting a grain mill for Christmas, I am going to jump into a new adventure in bread.  I am going to start playing around with some ancient grains.  I am going to start with a whole wheat and Spelt Pan Levain formula I found on Perfect Loaf, then an Einkorn Miche on the same site.  Then we go full into the darkside with Amaranth, sprouted grains and Freekah.  Will do my best to write about the trials and tribulations as I encounter them.

This should be fun and frustrating all at the same time.

4 types of bread baked for christmas lunch

bottom left is a Potato and Rosemarie s/d with white flour

bottom centre is a 1kg  brioche plait white flour

bottom right is a multigrain using London Porter as the  liquid content

 top is two curved epis  with black spanish olives and fennell seeds

flours used were an imported italian Granoro il Primo tipo "00" and a multigrain from a local providora in Fremantle.

I like easy bread. I bake because I am too lazy to go down to a bakery and buy bread. There have been times when I could put the tea kettle on, and step out the door, and be back with an excellent baguette before the kettle boiled.  If I could still do that, I would bake less often. 

Goals: 1200 g dough, 90% hydration, 1.9% salt.  Use last 266 g of home-milled Prairie Gold, and use equal amount, 266 g, of home-milled Kamut, and rest King Arthur All Purpose. Soak the 532 g (266+266) of home-milled flour for an hour with 88 % hydration, because it is coarse-milled. Use 100 g of starter, 125% hydration, with Cultures For Health San-Fran Sourdourgh culture (not the Whole Wheat/desem culture).  Fed it two days ago, hoping to bake then, but it sat in fridge.  Looks active, so I'll chance using it without feeding.

Given a busy holiday season and the very cold weather in my apartment, I wanted to try letting the bulk ferment go overnight. With the encouragement of the good TFL folks, I decided to try two loaves using 5% pre-fermented flour (50g starter/500g flour/375g water/10g salt) for an 11 hour room temp bulk (approximately 65 degrees) followed by 11 hours in the fridge.