Blog posts

I have a bottle of wine that isn’t my favourite so decided I’d try to make vinegar from it as a fun experiment.  Started on March 28/22.

The easiest method of making vinegar from wine is by using unpasteurized apple cider vinegar which has the mother in it.  Apparently it is Acetobacteraceae that metabolizes alcohol into acetic acid in an aerobic reaction.  If one uses unpasteurized apple cider vinegar the mother should be alive and well.  By adding this to the wine the Acetobacteraceae will convert the ethanol into acetic acid.  

I made a dough using some of the home milled Red Wheat @ 50% along with a good bakers flour and a bottle of Porter when i was having a baking day with my daughter and her friend Lilly. They came out rather well and i was very impressed with my daughter's oven that gave a nice crusty bake!

This is a modification of the recipe originally published in Reinhart's Whole Grain Breads - (Bread Calculator / Recipe)

This week it was time to try another whole grain bread. The spiced Swedish Limpa bread looked like a winner. I was a bit hesitant given the use of fennel and anise seeds along with cardamom and cumin. More on this later.

I have been making bread here for 22 years. We have good tap water, so I used it for bread, and never thought about it. My schedules for starter were about the same as it the books, so I was happy.

A few years ago, I started milling my own flour, and my starter with the fresh ground flour, was more active. I was happy.

Recently I was reminded that even good tap water has disinfectants in it that kill microorganisms such as those in sourdough. I moved to boiling my water to remove the . Now my sourdough rises faster. I am happy.

Continuing to enjoy the particular high extraction flour widely available here in Switerland aka Ruchmehl. It is very strong, holds a lot of water, and produces tasty and fluffy bread. Very non-white, but also without any grassiness or bitterness that whole wheat breads sometimes have.

I have several bags of semola rimacinata sitting in my closet that I almost forgot about. So although I have been baking a lot of whole grains I have in the back of my been thinking that I’d like to see what an enriched semolina bread might be like, hopefully it is good.

For those unfamiliar Lap Cheong are the Chinese sausages that are dry cured and super flavourful. I haven’t had these in decades and saw them at the local Chinese market so had to pick up a package. I decided to use them in a filled bun to showcase the flexibility of the SD Hokkaido Milk bread dough. For these buns I decided on a whim to use 50% WW and 50% bread flour. The in addition to the Lap Cheong the filling has oyster sauce and scallions.

My attempt at making this bread. There were two loaves, nearly square. They expanded and matted together in the oven. Pleasant taste, good expansion and open crumb.

Lovely rye/wheat rolls, mostly wholegrain. I made them with two preferments, one rye with rye starter,  and the second one made with whole wheat flour and a pinch of yeast. Both of them were 100% hydration,  for the sake if simplicity and easiness of mixing. I let them ferment for most of the day, about 8 hours. 

I also boiled and mashed a smallish potato and, while still hot, mixed it with 2 tablespoons of rye flour and then kept it nice and warm for several hours. 

My husband isn’t a big sourdough fan, so I will occasionally fiddle around with ways to minimize the acidity in our bread. Recently, I was thumbing through the second edition of Hamelman's Bread and was intrigued by his introduction to the formula for Swiss Farm Bread, in which he notes a lack of acidity. I decided to give it a try.