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Here's another attempt at crumb embellishment in croissants after an interesting cocoa experiment last week. Note the lower right croissant. The idea here is to have a bit of fun with the beautiful 'honeycomb' crumb that croissants produce (if done well). I wanted to see if a contrasting color could be incorporated into the lamination. The first attempt involved simply coating the dough in cocoa power and then performing the folds. That turned out to just complicate things as cocoa is so dry that nothing sticks.

This weekend’s bread was mostly spelt with a rye starter and some of last week’s leftover bread (altus). 

400 gr whole spelt (fresh ground)

270 gr water

6 gr salt

80 gr refreshed rye starter ( 100% hydration)

100 gr altus*

-autolyse spelt and water about 2hrs

-mix in starter, rest a bit, mix in salt and altus

-bulk ferment with occasional folds about 5 hrs

-preshape,shape proof in fridge overnight

-bake at 475 F covered for 20 min, 425 F uncovered for 20 more mins

This is a repeat of the Spiced Raisin Sourdough that I did a few weeks ago with a few changes, of course. ;-) I switched out half of the golden raisins for cranberries and I changed up the method quite a bit. It was a pain in the neck and made for a very long day (I started at 7:30 am and finished at 8 pm) but I think the results are worth it!

Recipe:

112 g red fife wheat berries

1000 g unbleached flour (split into 880 g and 120 g portions)

50 g freshly ground flax

179 g cranberries

179 g golden raisins

I wanted to compare the effect of using bran in the levain vs whole flour.  So on Wednesday morning I weighed out a little more spelt and rye berries than I needed (allowing for slight loss during milling) for each levain build then milled them.  I did this a little differently than usual.

Above: chocolate babka filling and cinnamon swirl

At the start of this month, Abel posted his version of a Pain Viennois, a bread I'd not ever heard of before, but it is a pretty darn good looking loaf.  At least the way he does it!  Much more appealing than the "traditional" version which looks more like a baguette in shape and adorned with as many as 20 or so scores diagonally down its length.  

A question to those of you out there doing this - dabrownman, Danni and any others.  How exactly do you do this?

Do you mill the flour required for the bake, sift out the bran then use bran instead of flour for 1st build, sieved flour for remainder

 or do you just mill some random amount of flour, sieve the bran out then take from these two fractions whatever you need you need for the levain part of the bake?

Sourdough: sweet or sour, I like it but each have its own place where it shines and complements whatever it was paired with. A pairing that is greater than the sum of its parts; the bread and its pair become exponentially more delicious that if one was to eat each one separately and alone. I was focused for a long time in baking mild sourdoughs because my parents do not like sour breads and I haven't met anyone with a greater or at least the same "Sour Threshold" as mine.

Lucy was more giddy than usual with this week’s baking experiment that actually ended up making bread instead of a scientific oddity – as seen on TV.  The premise was simple enough.  Do as little as possible and then do less than that but still squeeze in moderate glass of wine – in a plastic glass of course.

 See it is more matt.  I took the picture out to protect the innocent

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