Blog posts

  If you have been following my blog posts you know by now that I love a good porridge bread.  This one is no exception.

The addition of the coffee flavored maple syrup to the porridge and main dough added a nice slightly sweet undertone.  You don't really taste the coffee but overall combined with the rice this one is a keeper.

The crumb came out perfect; moist, soft and open.  This is one that is good enough to eat by itself.  I finished off the whole loaf using it for sandwiches and gave one away to a few of my dog park friends.

I called into South Metro Tafe Beaconsfield yesterday to make a booking for lunch at Quinlan's Training Restaurant for next week and was informed that the facility will be closing for good at the end of this term which is only 5 weeks away. 
I was given the opportunity to endulge myself and spend this morning with a number of Commercial Cookery students in the training restaurants bakery. Under the circumstances i thought it wise to grab the chance while i could.

This week’s round of RWC SD.  Changes for this one were:

• Dropped WW addition, increased Semolina
• Reduced hydration to 67% (was going to make baguettes, but didn’t)
• Increased 75F proof to 2 hours before overnight

Did my usual mix, rest, pinch, stretch/fold, rest, s/f, rest, s/f rest, bulk, etc.

This bread is based on Chad Robertson's Tartine 3 brown rice porridge bread.  As Robertson says, "...combine well-cooked whole grain rice with a highly hydrated whole wheat dough and let the loaves fully ferment with natural leaven to make the nutrients contained within the finished bread readily available for digestion."  I opted to use organic black rice for its rich nutritional value and cut back on the total amount added to the dough to keep the bread a bit lighter; I also added a small amount of oat porridge for complimentary taste and texture.  The dough was mixed with

What do you do when given some interesting flour to play with? well you have to go home and try it straight away! i made a White loaf with 10% addition of Millet Flour.

I required enough dough to fill a banneton 750g

bakers flour 90% 393g
millet flour 10% 42g
salt 2% 9g
lard 2% 9g
malt 2% 9g
yeast (dry) 2% 9g
water 70% 295g

after last s&f  Recent bakes by Kat and rgreenberg2000 looked so good I had to give this bread a try.  No emmer though and only 1 small loaf.

6:45 am Levain mixed up (a small amount of rye in this)and left at room temperature rising to 25° c

9:15 am Autolyse 

203 g bread flour + 14 g rye + 27 g durum + 27 g wholewheat + 216 g water

13:00 mix final dough - add 54 g levain followed by 100 SLAFs.

Add 4 g salt stretch and fold then 140 SLAFS. 

The smell of fresh bread in the air is so good in the morning. This one was baked at 4:30 am for breakfast. The recipe is as follows:

65 g levain @ 100% hydration

288 g flour mix (175 g bread flour, 93 g whole wheat, 20 g rye)

20 g seeds (chia + quinoa) scalded with 25 g boiling water

183 g water for mixing

15 g water (for double hydration)

4.5 g salt

Splash of honey

I haven't baked baguettes in ages. I'm not sure why. I baked a few today, including an epi de blé. It was very yummy with a bowl of bean and farro soup for lunch today.

The obligatory crumb photo. This is one piece of the epi.

I missed baking last week due to life getting in the way, so was happy to get some time this weekend to make friends again with "Woody" (yes, my starter has a name) and make a fresh batch of my usual weekly sourdough.  This week, I dropped the rye to let the semolina shine through a little more......next time, I think I will drop the WW (except for what's in the starter) and up the semolina appropriately.

1000g AP (KA)

100g WW (KA)

100g Semolina (Bob's)

250g Starter (100% hydration, fed w/WW)

803g Water

26g Salt