Blog posts

My sourdough Hokkaido milk bread dough is highly versatile, here is a 50% whole wheat version that I’ve spiced with cinnamon, allspice and nutmeg and added mixed candied peel and currants. These are soft, fluffy and not too sweet, they’ll be perfect for breakfast on the long weekend.  This formula uses a stiff sweet levain once again to avoid a sour tang to the bread.  The final pH measured from the baked bun is 5.02 which is remarkable especially considering the 20 hour long cold retard the dough received.

For years, I worked with various mixes of flour (bread, AP, spelt,  whole wheat, rye) and I used one starter, and it worked on all mixes. It was slow - about the speed indicated in the books on baking.

More recently, I have moved to all whole wheat (with 2% rye & 2% bean flour), all the time, and I have seen my fermentation/final rise times go way down (considering the dough temperature.)

Incredibly soft and delicious. It's slightly sweet, slightly acidic and very gently bitter from things that I used to make it.

Grandma style, which means non measuring or using volume units. With some normal and some a little weird add ons: old flour scraped from board and dried, old oats and poppy seeds that fell off a previous loaf, some roasted grains of rye, barley and wheat, a big handful of rye altus, dried apricots,  prunes and walnuts. Leavened with stiff rye preferment,  while store bought whole wheat (I think it was Gold Medal) is in the dough

I have a bottle of wine that isn’t my favourite so decided I’d try to make vinegar from it as a fun experiment.  Started on March 28/22.

The easiest method of making vinegar from wine is by using unpasteurized apple cider vinegar which has the mother in it.  Apparently it is Acetobacteraceae that metabolizes alcohol into acetic acid in an aerobic reaction.  If one uses unpasteurized apple cider vinegar the mother should be alive and well.  By adding this to the wine the Acetobacteraceae will convert the ethanol into acetic acid.  

I made a dough using some of the home milled Red Wheat @ 50% along with a good bakers flour and a bottle of Porter when i was having a baking day with my daughter and her friend Lilly. They came out rather well and i was very impressed with my daughter's oven that gave a nice crusty bake!

This is a modification of the recipe originally published in Reinhart's Whole Grain Breads - (Bread Calculator / Recipe)

This week it was time to try another whole grain bread. The spiced Swedish Limpa bread looked like a winner. I was a bit hesitant given the use of fennel and anise seeds along with cardamom and cumin. More on this later.

I have been making bread here for 22 years. We have good tap water, so I used it for bread, and never thought about it. My schedules for starter were about the same as it the books, so I was happy.

A few years ago, I started milling my own flour, and my starter with the fresh ground flour, was more active. I was happy.

Recently I was reminded that even good tap water has disinfectants in it that kill microorganisms such as those in sourdough. I moved to boiling my water to remove the . Now my sourdough rises faster. I am happy.

Continuing to enjoy the particular high extraction flour widely available here in Switerland aka Ruchmehl. It is very strong, holds a lot of water, and produces tasty and fluffy bread. Very non-white, but also without any grassiness or bitterness that whole wheat breads sometimes have.

I have several bags of semola rimacinata sitting in my closet that I almost forgot about. So although I have been baking a lot of whole grains I have in the back of my been thinking that I’d like to see what an enriched semolina bread might be like, hopefully it is good.