Blog posts

A few shots of the bread meet I attended in New York last Monday. It was big fun.

Daniel Leader liked my bread.

here is the loaf that I made with Farmer Ground Bread Flour.

Really happy with the crumb! Open and so tender.no sourdough tang at all with the YW influence. Very dominant flavor from the oats. Will definitely be trying this again. 

This weekend I baked my recent go-to Sourdough ft. my own starter (he's called Steve and is a 100% hydration rye starter). 

Everyone loves cinnamon raisin bread but I was leery of making some because of the negative effects of cinnamon on yeast. This is a shot at it adapting the recipe from Bourke’s Bakery Spiced Fruit  loaf. 

Makes 3 loaves of about 845 g raw weight 

 INGREDIENTS

700 g unbleached flour

200 g high extraction Durum flour (Mill 230 g Durum berries and sift. Save the bran for the levain.)

650 g filtered water

180 g golden raisins (or sultanas)

180 g Thompson raisins

40 g plain yogurt

50 g honey

 It's been awhile, and this entry is more to try and keep track of what's been baked lately.

After my third shot at the Hamelman five-grain, I went back to my usual formula, but adding the Hamelman-style hot soaker. One of the loaves actually made it down to Burgundy, where spring had put in an early appearance, as in all of France that week.

Taking a page from Ian

http://www.gadgetify.com/mecs-tech-ultrasonic-knife/

Have to get one of these for sure!

Inspired by the Community Bake a month or so ago, I decided to take a stab at Hamelman's Five-Grain Levain recipe.  This turned out to be a really delicious bread, which my wife likes a lot too, and there will be more loaves baked in the future.

The aroma is unbelievable!

Made with Stoates (Whole Spelt) and Marriage's (Superfines) Flour, tap water (pH 7.8) and sea salt. 

Refresh (aka levain) 4 hrs @ 30C
50g LM (from bath)
50g Stoates Whole SPelt
15g water
= very firm 45% est. hydration.

400g flour (50% Spelt, 50% white)
111g LM as above
280g water
9.5g salt
10g olive oil

Bulk 2hrs @ 28C

Shaped, not moulded/freestanding and proved until triple (proper triple!) 5hrs@ 27C.

I am tinkering with different flours and methods and one of them is to develop gluten for my weekly handmixed 4kg batch as close to a window pane as I can.....without having a mixer for now...

Carole aka DesigningWoman kindly recommended some videos from the Ecole International de Boulangerie for 'petrissage manuel en masse' which is basically manual mixing with folding and slap and folds...BUT I love in particular what he does when he divides and layers the dough pieces during slap and folds...