I wanted to bake a nice soft and flavorful bread but one with some healthy grains as well. In went a soaker left for 24 hours in hot water comprised of grits, rolled oats and barley flakes. I also added some left-over mashed potatoes and some grilled onions.
Finally bought an Emile Henry baguette baker... 1 year twice daily fed sourdough stater (785 g), 245 g H20, 545 g bread flour, 17 g salt... rise at room temp... and viola!
This was a special Halloween. It has been years since our daughter was home for one. The last time she was here we carved a Chi Oh Owl Pumpkin. This time we put Lucy on Pumpkin. It scared the heck out of her too!
Wow, it's been a while!
It's like my annual visit or what, ha ha.
So, it's Halloween and I am totally having fun with Jack every year!!
above photo: pumpkin dinner roles with chocolate custard cream in his mouth! ^ ^
and below: my standard, pumpkin fougasse as jack, black sesame fougasse as spider net, and some pumpkin cream twist role!!
The latest in my rye series is a Hamelman 70% medium rye with 30% WW, and a sizable pumpernickel soaker. My cracked rye was bug infested (doesn't move very quickly at the only bulk store that carries it); the pumpernickel was coarse. San Francisco Bay Area folks, if you know of a local source, please let me know.
This is a "do nothing" bread introduced from facebook's perfect sourdough group, where apart from mixing (could help myself from playing with wet dough so i did 2 folds at 1 hour interval) and 1 fold and loosely shaping, nothing else is needed. I was intrigued so i try tried a small batch of dough to make ciabatta. 90% hydration. 2 hours bulk at RT and 15 hours bulk in the fridge. loosely shaped n baked with steam for 15 mins.
Easy enough and i got a monsters inc ciabatta. Happy halloween!
Since receiving my copy of The Rye Baker, I've been baking and savoring its breads on a virtual basis. It is a beautiful book with many intriguing breads to try; far more than I sampled during the test bakes. Good as all that has been, the time has come to do some real baking. Actually, the time came last weekend but I hadn't made the necessary preparations, so I ran out of weekend before getting to bake anything from the book. Consequently, I made sure to have everything on hand and my schedule laid out so as to get serious about baking this weekend.
I was very pleased with last week's experiment so I decided to try using a single variety of whole grain flour with the same type of flake or grain. I also made an extra 2 loaves to give away to friends (posting on Facebook earns you people begging for bread. Ha ha!)
Last week, I went to a steak house with some work colleagues. This was not an ideal situation for me, only because I’m a vegetarian. The meatless main course options were severely limited. There was literally one choice, a roast vegetable dish.
It was a really delicious mix of roasted sweet potato, butternut squash, walnuts and pumpkin seeds topped with a generous amount of goat’s cheese, rocket and a sundried tomato vinaigrette/sauce/puree. To make it all even better, there was really great sourdough bread on the table!
