Blog posts

Friends are coming over after we go out for dinner.

I've been tinkering with the Pain de Rémésy recipe off and on and am sharing a modification that seems to work better and more reliably.

Here goes:

83% strong bread flour

2% rye flour

15% whole wheat flour

1% salt

2.5% sourdough starter

Less than a gram of instant baker's yeast (~0.6-0.7 per kilo of flour). I use a bit less than 1/8 a teaspoon for a 600g loaf. This is added in a supporting role, to help ensure a decent rise.

This experiment was suggested by Tom, here.

Conclusion: Excellent 

I was going to use 75% bread flour, but goofed and used a/p.

90g ap flour

30g CoW

66g egg (big farm egg)

I wanted to try again a sourdough loaf with 100% "Ruchmehl". I'm not 100% sure, but afaik the closest match for Swiss "Ruchmehl" is the first clear flour. It is the traditional flour for bread in Switzerland. Something in the middle between bread flour and whole wheat. In the recent years some millers in Germany and Austria have begun to produce this flour, but it's not really mainstream.

BTT - this is my second bake with this flour. I wanted a more open crumb with 100% "Ruchmehl" / first clear

100% Ruchmehl / first clear

80% total hydration

2% salt

Pizza Week 3.

I have been testing new formulations of pizza dough and have settled upon a formula similar to my baguettes but tweaked to make a Neapolitan style pizza dough, meaning elevated salt levels and low-end hydration with medium strength flour. In this case, I used the standard Caputo "Blue" Tipo 00 W270.

The dough handled beautifully and really was exceptional - tender but still with good chew and a pleasure to handle. Hand stretched into a round disc in the usual manner...

Needless to say I was ecstatic with the outcome...

You know that bubbly, lacy appearance when you look at a well-fermented starter through the side of its container? I've often wondered if that structure could be captured by baking it, and what the result would taste like. Now that I've got my new 4 X 4 X 4 Pullman pan (excuse me, "toast box"), I decided to try it out.

There’s 6# of bread gone! Had to start again. Granddaughter is making snakes too! 

I read about Tony's Brotgewürz rye/wheat loaves & Ian's Onion Caraway Rye -- so, in a bout of cross-polinated insanity 🤣, I baked something you might categorize as halfway between the two.

It's got a chopped rye scald & a diastatic rye malt scald. I added a little lactose-free kefir (because it's what I had on hand) and 1% caraway.

final proportions (including the 2 scalds):