Blog posts

The lineup from left to right:

1:2:2 levain of ryestarter & wheatflour & water, sitting on top of a  1:2:2 starter refresh of ryestarter & ryeflour & water

1:1 levain build of wheatberry-honey yeast water & wheatflour, sitting on top of the wheatberry-honey yeast water

1:1 levain build of apple yeast water & wheatflour  sitting on top of the apple yeast water

All flours are freshly milled 100% whole grain.

I attempted Modernist Cuisine's "French Lean Bread" recipe (as a large boule) ... and made a vlog about it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iay7lPEh0-4

The loaf is delicious! Not sure why the crust got all cracked up, but the crumb of the loaf itself was eminently satisfactory.

I’ve been following Kirsten of FullProofBaking on Instagram and have been interested in trying her Butterfly Pea Flower Sourdough for sometime.  I finally purchased some butterfly pea flowers on Amazon and decided I’d try to bake this.

Butterfly pea flowers 14.5 g dried flowers, green leaves and stems plucked off.  Steeped in 360 g boiling water x 10 mins and cooled, then 342.5 g added to flour during autolyse.

Total Dough Weight 900 g

Bread flour 80%  

Whole Grain 20%  

It has been a while since I have posted on The Fresh Loaf. I have been baking just as much as usual, but I have settled on favorite breads that I have shared at least once already. I decided I would post again only when I baked something new, at least new to me, that I thought was really good and worth recommending to other bakers for them to also try.

Alfanso's recent blog post about the classic baguettes that he made, gave me the inspiration to try my hand at baguettes again (I did reasonably well in my first foray, but just hadn't made them again in a few years.  I followed the recipe and process from Alfanso's blog entry to the letter, except for extending my bulk proof to 90 minutes, and reducing the retarded portion to 3 hours.  They came out......ok.  I'm definitely out of shape from a shaping perspective, my scoring needs practice, and I think I prefer a 330g dough weight instead of 310g.

Today's bread is made from fresh ground, sifted Hard Red Spring wheat from Montana Flour and Grains

Very basic bread - 

400 gr bolted fresh ground flour

320 gr water (80%)

8 grams salt

30 gr olive oil

2 tablespoons honey

60 grams levain (stiff starter ~65% hydration)

Process:

2 hr autolyse flour and water

Mix dough including autolyse, levain and salt - let rest ~30 min

mix in honey and oil.

Bulk ferment until nearly doubled (~4 hr as warm room temp)

Another blog entry aimed at our wave of new levain/SD bakers on TFL.

What happens when I don't refresh my starter, but then decide to make a bread?  I last refreshed my 100% hydration AP starter either on April 24th or May 1st.  My refresh history chart is a little unsure of itself.  But I had plenty of starter/levain ready to use.  Now, I know the drill because I've been there before, but many of you may not.

Here we have a signature Roadside Pie King bake. The hallmarks of which are, the final product looks impressive, yet the result is relatively easy to accomplish. 

 This pie features, pasta frolla (Italian sweet short pastry) filled with homemade from scratch chocolate cream (pudding)

Enjoy the photo montage...

So, I have made a sourdough starter, like everyone else this quarantine, to keep me occupied and learn something new. I have been keeping a journal in a notebook to record recipes and changes I make, but since I started this account I thought it would be fun to document it here as well, for anyone else feeling a little intimidated by their first starter and just for me to look back on.

Day 1: The starter is born! (31 Mar 2020)
1 cup white flour (all the store had) and 1 cup water, mixed in a jar covered with cloth and left on the counter.