Blog posts

I've been working on the requested update of the Scoring Tutorial. I was expressely asked to use "real" bread, instead of the dishtowels I used to demonstrate the use of a transfer peel. I made a batch of my San Frandisco-style Sourdough for this purpose. So, after finishing the third video for the new tutorial (one more to go), I had to dispose of my instructional materials. 

No expressions of sympathy are called for I assure you.

If you are like me and LOVE fruit breads, you will love love love love and LOVE this bread!!

Plus it’s not an all day or week bread and it’s not time-consuming……..

And there are so many variations you could do with this recipe which i WILL rattle on about at the end of the post.

I must say, thinking about what we could do with this lovely base recipe is divine..

Of course we would need to rename the bread though…

TFL'ers,

I have been baking mostly the same bread since I started making bread with yeast this month. 

300 g AP flour

1 tsp yeast

1 tsp sugar

1 tsp salt

1 cup water

I tried a couple of new things today - and what is really cool is that they all worked!

1.  autolyse for 30 min.

2. did a french fold. 

3. used a brotform

The last bake was so nice and this one is very similar except for a few differences that….. made a difference.  The sprouts, seeds, nuts, prunes and dough flours were nearly identical except we ran out of barley berries.

A commuter-friend travelling with me to London on the train used to live in Ravensburg, in a region in Germany called Oberschwaben.

One day he told me he really misses a speciality from there called Seelen.

They are rolls with an open crumb and a slightly chewy crust, sprinkled with caraway and coarse salt.

Searching the internet I found a number of recipes, and some descriptions of the "original": a roll made with spelt, using high hydration, long fermentation, and a wet, hot bake.

Sending this to Yeastspotting.

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Phew, it has been a busy holiday, and just turned into an even busier Janurary. Still baking a ton though, here are some stuff I have baked during the holiday but didn't get to post about before.

This is an continuation of the last multi-grain SD bake except that the hydration is slightly lower at 68%, the multi-grain flours were 54 %, the add in goodies are increased substantially since this bread has multi-grain sprouts to go with the multi-grain soaker and we also have pumpkin and sunflower seeds, as well as, pistachio and filbert nuts with a hint of prunes too.

Baked at midnight! 12 hour pre-ferment, 2.5 hour bulk ferment, 3 folds in the first hour, 1 hour proof.  425 oven * (see below):  30 minutes covered, 15 uncovered .

The aroma after 30 minutes in the oven was incredible! - like browned butter.  I almost slept in kitchen.

I exercised great restraint and waited until morning to try it. The crust is more on the chewy side, as is the crumb.