Blog posts

I don't post very often anymore, but I'm still out here, still baking, still reading about everyone's beautiful bakes! Hats off to you all!!

I often do a same day bake. I mill my own whole wheat, and the starter/levain goes crazy with that. I have over proofed more often than I care to remember. Now that I have found the sweet spot for proofing time, I haven't wanted to try an overnight refrigerator proof. Maybe this summer ... I could also reduce the amount of starter vs levain and let it go longer, but this timeline works so I haven't fussed with it.

Adapted from KAF No-Knead Harvest Bread

700g bread flour (Walmart)

300g white whole  wheat flour (Prairie Gold) 

20g salt

7g dry yeast 

800g cold water 

100g pecans,  chopped

100g dried cranberries, cut in 3-4 pieces 

Mix roughly,  let rest 20 minutes,  then 3-4 SF every 20-30 minutes. Mix fruits and nuts into the dough now, or laminate them later

Bulk ferment 2-3 hours, depending on your room temperature 

Divide in 2, form loaves, place in two clay bakers with covers

Tinkered with my Everyday Sourdough recipe by adding some freshly milled Kamut as well as incorporating some soaked Kamut flakes.  I was fairly happy with how this turned out given the fact that I let this dough go a bit too far during bulk ferment--trying to cook dinner while keeping an eye on fermenting dough continues to trip me up here and there.  During pre-bake research, I did note that several people stated Kamut tends to ferment quickly...wish I had remembered that last night during the bulk.  It stuck to the banneton on one side, just a bit. Sigh...

I strayed from my 'usual' bakes this weekend and had some fun experimenting with some new recipes.  My jumping off point was a post for a sourdough loaf I saw a month or so ago on Breadtopia that used blue cornmeal.  That recipe called for freshly milled corn, which I didn't have, but I did have blue cornmeal in the freezer (which makes superior cornbread BTW). 

1000g 00 flour (Ana Napoletana from Walmart)

680g cold water

10g salt (12g in the summer) 

1-5g dry yeast, depending on the temperature (this time I did 5g)

Day before in evening put everything except salt in a small bucket, mix into a rough dough.  Let rest 30-45min. Add salt. Stretch and fold a couple of times.  Let stand at room temp for 1 hour then move into a cold place (in my case it was a cool basement, around 14°C)

In the morning divide in 200-210g pieces, form balls, refrigerate until ready to bake

I have been craving a good solid whole wheat bread recently and thought I should also do some sprouted grains as well. I picked up a copy of Reinhart's Whole Grain Breads and got to reading. Of course the book starts with background and food science and stories. I enjoyed the detail he goes into with the development of this book, the recipes, and the methods specific to whole grain bread baking. 

A simple yeasted roll recipe from King Arthur with 67% whole wheat content.

I made this recipe recently when I needed a quick bake and I was really surprised at how well they turned out. A nice fluffy, soft crumb and pleasant mild wholewheat flavour.

A few recipe notes:

I used 7g IDY, mixed with the flours

Bread flour - Marriages organic strong white

Taking it easy and testing some yeasted recipes. This one is from KAF website https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/recipes/marble-rye-recipe

Slight modifications:

Less caraway. 1 tablespoon is just to assertive 🙂

Instead of potato flour I used small boiled and mashed potato (68g)

Didn't use milk powder, instead I added 4 heaping tablespoons of plant based kefir (from homemade soy milk) 

I made dark and light doughs separately.

Sourdough Bread for Zojirushi Dual-Paddle Bread Machines
(and other bread machines with a user-programmable cycle, sometimes called "Home Made Cycle")

Version 3.4
23 February 2022
(by troglodyte)

Introduction

Australian Beaufort Red Spring Wheat was ground this morning after being kept in the fridge to counter the heat that the milling has on the fresh flour. The flour was hydrated with the water and left to stand for for 30 minutes this was then placed in my noodle mixer and another 20 g of water was added as it seemed quite thirsty. The compressed yeast was added and after incorporation the butter was added and lastly the salt was added.