Blog posts

I felt like baking baguettes this week and decided to do something just a bit different, so I present sourdough baguette noir.  So the colour and flavour of these baguettes do not come from charcoal like baguette au charbon vegetal.  No the colour comes from ground toasted black sesame powder that is added to the well developed dough at the end of mixing. This brings an interesting colour to both the crust and the crumb.  The fat from the sesame seeds also cause the crumb to be softer and the crust to be thinner and super crisp compared to my usual SD baguettes.

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

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

I believe in the rewards of helping others. When someone on the forum needed a nostalgic bread recipe, I experimented with one. While it may not be their perfect match, it's become a tasty alternative to my family's beloved cranberry walnut daily bread.

Here is the latest in the 100% spelt Laurels Loaf For Learning series. It's the 2nd one I made with a scald. 

The first I tried (not pictured) used the original recipe hydration of 73%, which gave me a dough remarkably lacking in extesibility. The final bread tasted good but didn't rise well and had a bit of a claggy crumb.

A few days ago I posted about a loaf of bread that included cooked oatmeal and graham flour (see https://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/73391/oatmeal-graham-flour-sourdough-pullman-bread). I wanted to try it with buckwheat, and I found a box of Wolff kasha, which are toasted buckwheat groats.  Perfect!

I gave up doing bran scalds in my whole wheat bread a while back, as it didn't make much difference in my bread and I didn't enjoy all the fiddly sifting and messing about with it.  These days I just mix the dough and let it sit for half an hour to hydrate before I start kneading.

Hi everyone,  I'm happy to be back after a year of having a young person with celiac sharing my home.  They have moved on and I can mill and bake again without worrying.

To celebrate, I brought out my barely-used Nutrimill Artiste mixer and started really digging in to try and learn exactly how a fully kneaded,  fully developed 100% WW dough looks and feels.  And since spelt is my favorite-est  most delicious wheat, I've extended the project to 100% spelt.

Hello TFLers! Long time no read! It's that time of the year again for my mandatory year-end post.

Semolina bread. Two 750-gram loaves. 60% durum flour and 68% hydration. 15% of the total flour is pre-fermented in a liquid levain. Hamelman does not include an autolyzed stage and it appears that it is not required for the durum flour. I’m very happy with the result. The crumb was more open than I was expecting and the crust slightly chewy.  Eating quality excellent and very different from my usual sourdough.