So I'm about three months into my sourdough "experiment", have my starter (I call him Niles) nicely sour and thriving. Having tried a number of recipes, my biggest problem has been consistency. The nice thing about making bread... one dollar experiments.
Has anyone else noticed that the bags of 5lb bag are an ounce light? My last three bags have been short, and that's not counting the bag itself!
Cheers,
Wingnut
Organic Sprouted Wheat Berry with Whole wheat and Rye & 50% Sourdough Starter.
400 gm. Organic AP flour
60 gm. Organic KA WW
30 gm. Organic Medium Rye
11 gm. Kosher salt
1 TPSP Brown Sugar (Just cause I thought a little sweetness would go well with the wheat berry taste)
300 gm. H20
250 gm. 100% hydration starter fed twice
~ 1/8 tsp instant yeast (just to help in my cold damp Seattle kitchen J)
~ 1 cup sprouted wheat berries
12:00 AM March 9, 2013 (72 hrs)
Red
Lots of small bubbles on the surface only. Sorry; too hard to photograph. :(
Blue
Flattened to sides of container but no difference in volume. Based on the time passed, the directions say I should refresh now. But it hasn't puffed up the way Sweetbird's did . Line of dough on container is the true measurement. I've decided to give this another 24 hours and see what happens. Ugh...
12:30 AM March 10, 2013 (96.5 hrs)
Red
Same surface bubbles as yesterday....
Blue
I have NO IDEA if this one is going to work. I've given this one 72 hours rather than 48 in hopes that it would puff up the way Sweetbird's did but so far it looks like a pancake that was left out to rot!!
Earlier in the week I attempted to make a bread using a raspberry dessert wine and I didn't take my own advice and used too much wine in the bake. It did not develop properly and the final bread ended up gummy and is now food for my compost pile.
A couple of days ago I made an attempt at Eric's Rye using this formula
http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/5076/eric039s-fav-rye#comment-25620
substituting Bread Flour in the Final Dough since I had no access to First Clear Flour
Specifically:
I built a Rye starter with three progressive builds over 24 hours, 2:1:1 with the following results
Build 1: 20g seed starter, 10g Whole Rye, 10g Water; the seed starter all white Bread flour, 100% Hydration
I confess, I am in no way skilled at lamination and hardly ever make croissants. It’s something I’ve done only a handful of times. These were my best yet and not only that, these are solely leavened by natural means, a first.
Original recipe found here - I scaled it down and used a lower ratio of butter for folding in.
I am geting a "burnt" bottom on my breads. I bake at 450 in a gas oven in one cast iron pot and one ceramic pot covered, both have the same effect. I tried putting two layers of parchment paper between the bread and the pot, still no luck. I bake for 40 minutes covered and 8 minutes uncovered.
Pics............
