Blog posts

My wife went into chocolate crisis the other day and asked me to pick up some Nutella. She said something like wanting me to make a bread "oozing with Nutella." Although I acted on this request and used a good amount of the stuff, I misinterpreted the ask. What she wanted was something more like a giant Nutella-filled sourdough bread doughnut literally oozing with the stuff. What we got instead was delicious and might even become part of the regular rotation around here. 

This weekend I decided to start my journey into rye breads with Hamelman's 40% Caraway rye but I chickened out of the 40% reducing it to 30% for this first try(double anything I have made before).

Last night I mixed the rye levain and left overnight on bench.

300g rye meal flour

100g Hi grade (11.5% protein so not quite Hamelman's Hi gluten flour)

332 g water

20 gm starter.

This morning I added 600 g Hi grade flour

348g water

17.5 g caraway seed

18 g salt and 4.2g instant yeast.

Not quite a year ago Lucy took a shot a sprouted SFSD that had a bit of sprouted whole grains here

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/41346/sprouted-sourdough-white-bread

I tried posting this one yesterday and tfl blew up on me when I pressed save. I got a black screen with lettering in white saying page not available. Will try this again.

This spring, things were going nicely. Fatherhood had settled into me, and I was regularly baking breads and cinnamon rolls, with some breads even getting posted on this blog. In June, I fell off my bike, breaking three bones (right elbow, hand, pinky finger) and whacking my head hard enough on the pavement to give me a concussion and require several stitches. Bread baking and starter maintenance abruptly slowed to a minimum. I even walked a friend through the process of making a bread in my kitchen one weekend so we could have some for a BBQ. 

Here is a nice olive loaf I just did, Taste great and made a nice sandwich, but I could have used more olives. 

Here is the crumb shot of the raisin fennel and pine nut bread that I made yesterday. Nice taste and made a great grilled cheese sandwich.