Blog posts

I haven't cut one open yet to see the crumb but my first time using spelt and was fun to do.

Used the Mock Mill to grind my cornmeal. There isn’t much information out there so had to experiment. I ordered 6# of Hoosier Hill Farm yellow popcorn. Haha I was optimistic about my new project! 

I used “10” to start thinking it would be good for polenta. I then took out one cup of that and moved down to “5” then “1”. 

 I had an excess of sweet potatoes in the pantry so it was time to try a bread with potatoes in it. Thank to whoever mentioned that sweet potatoes are 70% hydration. That really helped in making sure I didn’t end up with soup instead of dough. ?

Makes 3 Loaves

Ingredients

Decided to make my first adventurous sourdough an Irish one and also wanted to bring porridge into it as i haven't tried that yet. So i settled with a strong cheddar + stout/oat soaker. I was thinking the stout soaker would be a good idea as the oats would soak up the stout/alcohol and wouldnt effect my bulk dough performance as much to try make the results a bit more predictable. 

My last 2 bakes have been Tartine country bread so i loosely based this recipe and process off that. 

Gathered my ingredients:

 I have kept this bread simple as half of it was give away to some friends.

30% Toasted Sprouted Black Quinoa Sourdough

Dough flour (all freshly milled):

180g      60%       Whole white wheat flour

90g        30%       Toasted sprouted black quinoa flour

I continue to work with multi-grain sourdough breads using home-milled flours. Today, I baked two loaves. Both used the same dough, a mix of Central Milling ABC flour, whole Sirvinta wheat, Spelt and Rye. The Sirvinta whole wheat is the thirstiest I have ever encountered. For today's bake, I boosted the dough hydration to 85% with good results.

I mixed the doughs for each loaf separately and folded in 20% each dried cranberries and lightly toasted pecans in one of the doughs.

Photo Gallery

Recently, my loaves have not been fully up to scratch – a bit spready on the peel, poor loft and poor ears.

My starter seemed to be performing OK, but sometimes with starters, who knows? I’m not the sort of baker who would cherish a 100 year old starter, so time to try a new one!

Happy New Year to All...

I have not posted very much but my first bake in 2019 was using 50% Strong White Marriages combined with 50% Swiss Ruchmehl that I ordered before Christmas from a supplier in Germany.

I don't know much about this flour but it was so smooth during baking and tastes a bit like a Pain the Campagne with a rustic taste... 

Love to experiment with different flours and would buy this again, if available in UK. Never mind... Kat

Hello,

Do you prefer to sift your fresh milled flour? What would be the main reasons to do so or not?

This bake is about 50% bread flour mixed with 50% non-sifted fresh milled whole wheat and rye. The hydration is 68% with 18% fermented flour. No autolyse, 5.5 hours bulk fermentation and 5 hours in the fridge after shaping. Baked out of the fridge on a cold pot and cold oven. In general I am pleased with the result and the crumb is soft and aerated. Mind you that I milled the grain in the blender, so the flour is kind of coarser than commercial.

Here are the top 100 ETFs over the last 10 years based in average yearly returns

The top 25 returned more than 15% annual returned and the bottom 25 returned more than !0.5%