Blog posts

The recent flurry of chatter about SFSD, Larraburu Bros and Galal et al. highlights curious issues about the terroir of bread.  It occurs to me that bread has a staggeringly more extreme element thereof than wine, cheese or olive oil.  Forgive me if this is obvious and widely acknowledged.  These are new(ish), or at least somehow suddenly more deeply considered, ideas for me.

I used my 'cheat' sourdough starter for this one. It is reasonably quick because it uses yogurt and a 1/4 teaspoon of instant yeast and makes a fair volume of starter. The recipe stated 180g of starter refreshed with 80% wheat and 20% rye flour.  The bread is made with coconut water and also contains grated coconut. Slow rising, it sat in the fridge overnight for its first rise and I finally baked it the next evening. I love the way the aroma of the coconut takes over the kitchen when you toast it. We took the final slices with us when we went hiking in the mountains.

I haven't contributed for a while, this is a s/d loaf using Caputo Italian flour Type 0 that has recently become available at the local Supermarket its a Manitoba Ora. On the label it says it is well suited to long fermentation times.

The dough was inoculated  with 10% s/d culture and the formula worked out for a 750g dough piece. 

flour 436g

salt 9g

s/d culture 44g

water 262g

One of my favourite baked goods is a crusty and seedy roll, perfect as a sandwich or eaten open-face like the Germans do. Once again I tried to increase the nutritional content by using Spelt rather than white flour, and by adding a chia and flax seed soaker. I added SD starter for flavour, but also used yeast because I was baking the same day. These tasted great and were a good balance of chewy and fluffy on the inside. The recipe below made 8 rolls, but if you want them larger just divide into 6 rather than 8.

Common sense suggests to tweak bread recipe variables one at at time so as to be able to better isolate and understand the effect of each variable. That is my usual practice but this was a "let's try all this and see what happens" weekend bake.  

A few shots of the bread meet I attended in New York last Monday. It was big fun.

Daniel Leader liked my bread.

here is the loaf that I made with Farmer Ground Bread Flour.

Really happy with the crumb! Open and so tender.no sourdough tang at all with the YW influence. Very dominant flavor from the oats. Will definitely be trying this again. 

This weekend I baked my recent go-to Sourdough ft. my own starter (he's called Steve and is a 100% hydration rye starter). 

Everyone loves cinnamon raisin bread but I was leery of making some because of the negative effects of cinnamon on yeast. This is a shot at it adapting the recipe from Bourke’s Bakery Spiced Fruit  loaf. 

Makes 3 loaves of about 845 g raw weight 

 INGREDIENTS

700 g unbleached flour

200 g high extraction Durum flour (Mill 230 g Durum berries and sift. Save the bran for the levain.)

650 g filtered water

180 g golden raisins (or sultanas)

180 g Thompson raisins

40 g plain yogurt

50 g honey

 It's been awhile, and this entry is more to try and keep track of what's been baked lately.

After my third shot at the Hamelman five-grain, I went back to my usual formula, but adding the Hamelman-style hot soaker. One of the loaves actually made it down to Burgundy, where spring had put in an early appearance, as in all of France that week.

Taking a page from Ian