Blog posts

I haven't posted anything in ages since I tend to make the same loaves on a regular basis that I have shared before.  I am still baking weekly, and I visit here often to see what creations everyone is baking up!  This week, I decided to shake things up a bit and find some loaves that would be fitting for holiday gatherings and gifts.

The recipe and method used to make the bread in this post is identical to this one with one extra addition. 14g (4% baker’s percentage) of wheat bran flakes are soaked in water, kept in the fridge overnight and strained before added to the preferment along with the coarse part of the ww flour and two starters, sourdough & sourwort.

Photos from this attempt:

Please see here and here to learn more about concentrated lactic acid sourdough (CLAS). 

I searched but could not find a posting on Hamelman’s Harvest Bread so I thought I’d post my experience. I baked a test loaf to see if I wanted this for Thanksgiving. I have gotten so much help and inspiration from this site over the years and I would like to extend my deepest thanks to all you bakers.

This boule was made from 100% whole wheat flour using dual sourdough/lactic starter.

Whole wheat flour:    ‘Caputo Integrale’ with germ and bran (13% protein)

Sourdough starter:     Whole rye, 80% hydration, 18C, refresh rate 50% once daily, phase 60%

Lactic starter:              Sourwort Made Easy

Vital wheat gluten:    ‘vwg’ 80% protein (optional but helps)

In this short post I describe how I prepare sourwort (lactic starter) nowadays for bread making with emphasis given to starter freshness and simplicity of technique.

Only a small quantity is prepared at a time just enough for a single bake (no propagation, no fridge storage, no additives). Made and used fresh each time ensures greater control over starter behavior, robustness and overall microflora liveness.

Equipment requirements include a means of keeping the starter warm while fermenting and a small size French press coffee maker.

Procedure

I find that if I don’t make baguettes often enough I get very rusty. I haven’t made baguettes in about 4 months so was really very overdue. I’ve always thought that epis look really nice and never tried making one, so here is my first effort at an epi. I also hadn’t done a seeded crust in quite some time so that was also overdue.

I wanted to make some more discard cookies and this time chose to try something different.  It's fall and approaching the holidays.  Molasses cookies seemed like a good candidate.  Did a quick search and decided to use this recipe from Cooking Classy as the base for my discard recipe.  Happy to say that I'm really happy with how these turned out!

I have always loved eating these delicious crispy flaky pancakes from my homeland and always wanted to try making them.  They are definitely best eaten right off the frying pan so they can’t be better than homemade.

After taking a go at an olive polenta loaf a few weeks ago, I wanted to try the saccharification process highlighted by Benny in his loaf that's currently featured on the homepage.  I didn't have diastatic malt powder on hand, so I used honey as it's supposed to also have amylase.  The polenta definitely seemed a little sweeter after the process, but then again, I added honey to it, so it's a little hard to attribute the source of the change.  Pretty straightforward approach otherwise.