Blog posts

The question I had is what would happen if you fed a Blueberry Yeast Water/Bread Flour levain additional Blueberry Yeast water, using seeds from previous levain builds.  Namely, what is the effect of increasing population of blueberry yeast over a series of builds while holding the overall volume constant.  Would there be an improvement or degradation in rise times or volumes?  Would there emerge a limit as to how quickly a doubling or peaking would occur?  Would it explode into a new black hole? These were the questions that I just had to answer for myself.

I don't know why I've waited so long to make this bread, after buying hamelman's book. I've done it before, from intructions giving on this blog, which were very helpful, btw. For grains, I used a mix of fennel seeds, flaxseeds, spelt berries and oat bran. I retarded the dough overnight, omitted the yeast as instructed, and I baked it directly from the fridge. For the final fermentation, the instructions weren't very clear to me... in case I opted for retarding the dough overnight, it still gets an hour of fermentation on room temperature, or after shaping goes directly in the fridge??

I’ve been experimenting with various types of yeast water for several weeks now.  I now have five separate jars percolating on the counter or in the refrigerator.  Since I’ve discovered that very little if any fruit flavor is discernable in baked breads made from these waters, it makes sense to me to keep only one.  It also makes sense to me to keep the one that is the most effective.  I have heard that raisin yeast water is the strongest and most active.  When I first started experimenting with these waters, I made a raisin/apricot yeast water, but the color and mu

To anyone 

  Where can i find "Knoxbridge Mills" premium high glutten and "Knoxbridge Farms" premium wheat flour less than 50 # ?

or what can i use as a subtitute ?

 The last set of experiments was to determine whether the use of fruit based yeast in the absence of flour in the starter would result in more fruit flavor in the final loaf. Much time and effort went into weaning my standard sourdough starter from a diet of wheat flour and water to a diet of pure fruit puree.  This starter was used to create a boule with the starter, AP flour and peach puree. The result was less than spectacularly peachy. 

I have eyed Hansjoakim's post : here ever since he blogged about using his excess ripe rye as a leaven for a Pain au levain with Wholewheat from Hamelman. Hans has generously posted his recipe, and i, sickened from my failures with liquid white levain, and attracted by the description of the flavor, finally decided to try it yesterday.

My assessment ritual with new loaves (I only do SD) is as follows:

1. When the 2 hour cooling period is up, I slice an end off, spread it with a little unsalted butter, and share it with my partner.  Exchange oohs and aahs (when appropriate).

  Just what's needed, right?  Another pizza dough.  There's nothing glamorous about this one, either.  That's what I love about it - it's dependable above all else.  It makes a nice pizza and some pretty good sandwich rolls.  The triple batch gives me enough dough for a pizza the size of my pizza stone and sandwich rolls for a week's worth of lunches.  This has become my standard survival bake when I don't have time for anything else.

Pain de Campagne using a Stiff Wheat Levain and a portion of Gilchesters Organic Farmhouse Flour

Leaven Build