Blog posts

Nov. 25, 2020.

A variation on the previous bake.  Sourdough starter, Deep brand semolina (gritty, not flour), whole  not-soaked chia. 

New to this: added whole not soaked not toasted yellow millet, some ground roasted malted wheat (Briess Midnight wheat malt, non-diastatic https://shop.greatfermentations.com/product/briess-midnight-wheat-malt/specialty-grains ), and some Gold Medal bread flour.

Another great baking day. The crust was crunchy, crisp, and super flavorful. Too many good bakes in a row, I am due for a disaster :-)

We were having a friend over and decided we wanted to make pizza. We are making pizza at least twice a month now, but usually we throw the pizza together at the last minute, which enables a tasty pizza but just not as good as one where the dough is started the day before.

It's been a while since I've made this ciabatta that is based on Reinhart's Poolish Ciabata recipe in The Baker's Apprentice.  Happy to see that it's as reliable as ever for me.  This is based off of Reinhart's Poolish Ciabatta.  modifications include addition of oil and process changes.

Poolish
320g bread flour
340g room @70F  (or cooler if in warm climate)
pinch of Dry Instance Yeast (I literally, use two fingers to pinch some yeast for this. it doesnt register on my scale)

Nov. 23, 2020.

No measuring on this except for 3/8 tsp salt.

Starter, spring water, "Deep" brand Pani-puri semolina flour (gritty, not true flour, but fine grit) UPC 0-11433-11281-9, from Patel Brothers (same package as this: https://www.walmart.com/ip/Deep-Semolina-Pani-Puri-2-Lb/388456304 ),  whole chia seed.  The chia was not soaked prior to adding, and it was incorporated -- not used as a coating.

To learn more about concentrated lactic acid sourdough (CLAS), please see here and here. 

Recently I have been making fine adjustments to my oven to max out the rise of my loaves and mentioned in a post that I wasnt seeing the full rise across the length of the loaves.  Having done a few ciabattas in the new CM right after cooking a few pizzas at 650F I remembered a steam comment by idaveindy regarding super heated steam.  So this time while preheating I decided to go for some higher temps and this time broke my cardinal rule of never using ice / cold water.  I think in the past when bumped temps, the steam teay was producing steam that was too hot and cooking the

The community bake provided the excuse to bake a simple ciabatta recipe that a friend has been baking for years.

It is the exact opposite of my recent sourdough breads in almost every dimension: instant yeast, has no autolyse, uses sugar, is super rapid, no wholewheat, etc etc. Even for an instant recipe it is fairly minimalist eschewing the biga or couche or anything that would complicate the life of the home baker for whom the original recipe was intended.

Sometimes it is fun to try something radically different, and it reminded me of what was possible in bread baking.

I’ve been making quite a few porridge breads lately so for a change, I used a soaker. This made for a much wetter dough. I’m happy that I decided to hold back 50 g of water and see how the dough was before adding it in. It wasn’t needed so I left it out of the recipe. If you include the soaker ingredients as part of the flour, the hydration is close to 85%. My dough would have been soup with that extra 50 grams! 

Recipe

Makes 3 loaves 

Soaker 

60 g Spelt flakes

60 g Kamut flakes

My wife and I really enjoy these rolls or buns made out of the same dough as Spiced Cheese and Herb Sourdough (E. Hadjiandreou). I like to bake them so that they have a crackly crust.

Since yesterday was my day off, and the weather was a crisp 30 degrees outside, it seemed the perfect time to do some baking. I used a recipe that I tried the first time last year with great success. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to use a pate fermentee this time, so resolved to let the loaf sit longer in its fermentation to balance out.