Blog posts

Nov. 17, 2021. 69th bake.

Continuing along the lines of the last several bakes, this was about 300 grams of BRM WW red wheat and about 100 grams of Patel stone-ground WW durum.

Tweaks: Full 2% salt this time. No milk. 1 hr autolyse with salt. All sourdough this time, 41 grams, no commercial yeast.  1 tsp of ground-toasted bread spice*, plus another 1/2 tsp of whole caraway. 10 grams whole chia seed pre-soaked in 40 grams water.  

Did 100 folds of "kneading in the air" prior to some stretch-and-folds during bulk.

I bake 2 loaves of country bread once a week always with slightly varying formulas and methods. This week I tried only feeding my levin once a day for the whole week and building up to the amount of levain I needed on bake day by feeding it twice before mixing into dough. Previously I had started feeding levain twice a day 3 days before bake and three times a day starting 2 days before. I tried this new method in order to minimize waist since I rarely use levain for other purposes and to go through flour less quickly.

We've been traveling. It seems a bit odd to say that we are vacationing, since we are retired, so “traveling” might be the better verb.  Last week we were in Nashville, TN.  This week we are in Sapphire, NC.  

Back from two weeks off without any baking. My starter was refreshed two weeks ago at 50% hydration, given 1 hour at room temperature then refrigerated. The pH had only dropped to 4.4 or so when I returned so there was plenty of food left. I discarded some, then brought the hydration up to 100% and did a small feed. He tripled in 3 hours but had not yet peaked, so I discarded and fed him again. 5 hours later he had peaked at 3.5-4x with the dome just starting to flatten. He was ready to build a levain for this bake.

Made this soft and sweet sandwich loaf.

Still learning, but this is my favourite kneaded bread so far. I've used this recipe for cinnamon buns and mini loaves as well. It holds shapes really nicely. I have made pumpkins, skulls, snakes, and snails for example with it. 

Borrowing Mashing from Beer Brewers

In the last two weeks, I've played with "mashing" malted rye and buckwheat to produce a sweet scald for my baguettes. Mash is a term used by beer brewers when they add enzymes to their grains and keep them hot over time to break the starches down into sugars. My mash blended buckwheat flour, diastatic malted rye flour, and hot water, and kept it at 55 celcius for 20 hours. 55 celcius was the best my proofing box could do, and was also a good temperature to keep amylase enzymes active and not destroy them.

This recipe from Cedar Mountain was perfect for the new batch of grain berries that I received from Daybreak Mills. It took a bit of work when you consider caramelizing the onions, milling and sifting the bran out of the flour and toasting the seeds, but the one thing I didn’t count on, was how sticky the rye made the dough. Coil folds started off nicely but as the dough warmed up, it became super sticky. I took it out of the warm spot near the end of bulk hoping to make it a bit more manageable. And I preshaped it right after the last coil fold.

1-2-3 bread with 20% Caputo Semola Rimacinata. Add ins as part of liquid EVOO/honey / buttermilk( ran out of yogurt) levain all raisin YW. Crumb shot later. 

Edited to add crumb shot from 2 baguettes that I shaped with some of the dough just to see what would happen. Wow… cool custard open. Perfect. The book couldn’t be judged by the cover! 

As per my last entry, I was making a 12 hour fermentation no knead bread and my brain for some reason said 24 hours... 

I'm making myself a 12 hour fermentation no knead bread and my brain decided it needed 24... I noticed my mistake around hour 23... I should have noticed it earlier as I've been scrambling for hours trying to soften the "rind" that formed during the rise. 

I'm soldiering on. But I don't think there will be anything left for the second rise now that I've folded it.

It smells fantastic, but I think it will be small.