Blog posts

Oh dear... How long have I been away from TFL? 

HA! Trick question. I was always here, browsing and skimming through posts. It's just, I've been mighty busy with my bakery (Siem Reap Bäckerei) and other matters in Cambodia. In fact, my eyes are often bloodshot because I rarely sleep more than a few hours at a time. Really, yesterday I only had a total of 5 hours of shut-eye. The day before that, 6 hours. And so on, and so on.

A Centaur has a man-stomach and a horse-stomach. And of course both want breakfast. So first of all he has porridge and pavenders and kidneys and bacon and omelette and cold ham and toast and marmalade and coffee and beer. And after that he tends to the horse part of himself by grazing for an hour or so and finishing up with a hot mash, some oats, and a bag of sugar. That's why it's such a serious thing to ask a Centaur to stay for the weekend. A very serious thing indeed.     C.S. Lewis.  The Silver Chair

Today I baked my standard country levain using my typical formula:

• 85% AP
• 15% WW
• 82.5% Water
• 19% 50%WW-50%AP-60%Water-50%Fresh Inoculant Levain - 4 hours @27C. 
• 2.25% Salt (Amounts to 2% after figuring in the starter - may try reducing eventually along with .5-1% water)

Autolyze 1 hour. Add Levain (cut up) and Salt, Mix until the levain no longer feels chunky. DDT 27C.

Bulk ferment for 3.5 hours, with 5 folds every 30 minutes. Your time may vary, its been as low as 3 hours and as high as 4.25. 

I have made this recipe a few times since I first posted it on this site, and I received some great suggestions from TFL bakers.  Steve22802 did two cold fermentations rather than one, and Tanorama added fruit, so I tried a few different twists on this batch of dough, which makes three loaves.  I did three things differently than the recipe (link below) on this bake:  1. I did everything by hand and didn't use my KitchenAid stand mixer; 2. I did two cold proofs, one after the room temperature bulk proof, per the recipe, and a second overnight proof after shaping. 3.

Today I baked a wholewheat Miche. The formula was as follows:

50% hand-bolted hard white whole-wheat flour, 

25% Hard Red Whole Wheat

15% Soft White Whole-Wheat (next time I will use 15% Hard Red and 25% Soft White)

10% AP Flour (I got lazy because I didn't want to mill more flour on my mill!)

105% Water 

16% Fresh Firm Levain (WW with 60% hydration, 50% inoculant) - DDT 27C

2.25% salt

Autolyze 1.5 hour, holding back 5% water.

It's sunny in Northern California and the Farmer's Markets are kicking out all the goodies.  Still sticking to some of my solid formulas that are either set in their way and/or need just little tweaks.  Last week it was a new rendition of Country Bread and I'm very happy with the results.  

Looks better with the puff paste top on?

2014 Dabrownman’s TFL Blog Index

1/1/2014 - New Year’s Panettone - 2014

1/3/2014 - YW SD Spelt and White Whole Wheat Miche

This weeks bake was brought about by chance.  Lucy found some Turkish figs hiding out in the fridge where they were tossed several months ago.  Thank goodness they were already dried before being lost to the cold.

Well, I had to try it again, to see if I can do better than my last effort.  I would say that this is the best gluten-free loaf I've ever made, and it's sourdough, which I prefer. Not close to regular sourdough, but OK.

Gluten-free bread tends to be much heavier than gluten-bread, and this was no exception.  However, I got decent crust this time, and the crumb was OK. The taste was good, very dense and moist compared to gluten bread, but tasty and tangy.

Recipe is from Peter Reinhart's Artisan Bread.

Some changes

1) 10% whole wheat flour

2) 10% whole spelt flour

3) 5 types of nuts/seeds of equal weight - pumpkin, sunflower, flax, pine, sesame.

4) More pumpkin seeds were added to the top of the loaf after shaping instead of the suggested sesame seeds.

Dough was in the fridge from Wednesday night to Friday evening.

After shaping, it was proofed in a loaf tin for 2 hours.