Blog posts

Objective: To see how the length of bench proof after shaping (before retardation) impacts on crumb. 

 So here is my formula  & method for 2 kg dough (enough for 5 x 400g batards):

Levain:  Refreshed yesterday, final build overnight.
34 g starter + 20 g wheat bran + 160 g water  + 140 g flour 

Today 11 am:  Autolyse 45 minutes
662 g flour + 282 g wholewheat freshly ground + 26 g gluten + 654 g water

This is not my first baguette, but definitely the best effort.  Used Hamelman’s Baguette with poolish.  I have upped the hydration a bit to 72% and replaced a bit of flour with some soya flour 2% (after reading Abel’s comment I thought why not!) so here we go..
Last night mixed poolish and left overnight.  
156 g flour + 156 g water + 0.3 g instant yeast
Today: Mid morning poolish looking good, mixed final dough ingredients together and added poolish. 

301 g flour + 7 g gluten flour + 9 g soya flour + 9.5 g salt + 1.5g instant yeast.

Sourdough donuts....some coated with cinnamon sugar, some with a cardamom honey glaze.  I used an egg, milk, sugar, butter dough with a sourdough levain; slap and folded, proofed at room temperature for 5 hours; refrigerated over night; rolled/cut into rounds and proofed at room temperature for another 2 hours before deep frying at 350 F for about 2 minutes per side.  I didn't spend a lot of time folding and shaping each donut so they turned out pretty "rustic" looking but I think they tasted pretty good, nice soft bready texture too.   

Fellow TFLers,

 I decided to have some fun this week creating a new stater based on 100% whole wheat and blending my own flour in a vitamix. This is the first bake using the new starter.

Now that I've been able to protect the bottom of my loaves well, I'm trying to get darker crusts without burning the bottom.

Hi friends,

I baked 80/20 mainly white loaves letting it go to 50% rise in bulk based on the recent thread discussing the difference between a 30% and 50% rise and considering the thoughts from Trevor and Maurizio....I realized that I probably was more a 50%ish baker.....as it happens but also experimented with 30% rise in the past...

If you go 50% rise then this also affects retarding and 2nd proof and Trevor mentions this actually in his book at the very end....reading it yet again afresh....

I always make a bit more Levain than I need because some sticks to the walls of the container and then I would end up short. This time, I guess I made a bit too much, and since I hate throwing away something I nurtured along, I figured a quick 1-2-3 bread with left over durum semolina and a touch of honey would do the trick. 

155 g mature Spelt Levain (100% hydration made with Spelt bran and sifted Spelt flour)

325 g water

90 g durum semolina 

375 g unbleached flour

11 g salt

10 g yogurt 

25 g honey

 This won’t be much of a write up because I used the same recipe and method as my last bake except for the following:

1. I used Roger’s Oats with Ancient Grains instead of plain large flake oats. 

2. I added all of the water at the beginning which made for easier mixing. 

3. I threw in an extra fold but kept the total fermentation time at 3 hours and 45 minutes. 

4. I retarded the loaves for only 8 -9 hours and baked directly out of the fridge. 

5. I tried baking for 30 minutes with the lid on and 17 minutes with the lid off. 

Ten years ago, in October, 2008, I first converted George Greenstein's recipe for Jewish Sour Rye from volumetric to weighed ingredients. I posted my formula here, and I make this bread with some frequency. I recently noted that I apparently never did document the baker's math for this formula, which makes it more challenging to scale up or down. So, after making a 3 pound loaf of this wonderful bread today, I worked out the baker's math, and I will share it, along with a more heavily annotated set of procedures.

Jewish Sour Rye Bread

Hello friends! 

This weeks' bake was fun for me, tried a few new things. Second time doing coil folds for gluten development (I like it), first time using a "young levain" (I don't like it), first time using a stencil for my design (I like it!)

Formula: 

160g 100% hydration levain (73% whole wheat, 27% rye), used after 5 hours. [Normally, I'd use it just after it peaks, 10ish hours after feeding. The dough felt a bit different this time, really soft and not as tight. It wasn't terrible, just not what I'm used to.]

294g water