Blog posts

German Feinbrot

When I moved to Maine in 2001, to get even - with the guy who had sold me a houseful of furniture - but refused to give me a rebate - I knew I would be in big trouble. And I was right, after two days my stomach started complaining and my brain kept sending "gag" signals, when I walked the supermarket aisles and encountered nothing but row after row of "wonderbreads".

Greetings, bakers!

I've taken a bit of a break from ryes in the past couple of weeks, baking Honey Lemon Whole Wheat from Clayton's Complete Book of Breads and the Pain au Levain with Whole Wheat from the King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking book.  This weekend, though, I went back to rye again, baking the Soulful German Farmhouse Rye from Daniel Leader's Local Breads.

Sunflower seeds is a favourite of mine, whether it's in dense Vollkornbrots or lighter sourdough breads. I've toyed around with different formulas for seeded levains for some time, but my best one so far is the one I tried this weekend. The formula is not unlike Hamelman's seeded sourdough bread, but the one I've settled on, uses a rye sourdough and some more whole-grain flour than Hamelman. The dough is not particularly wet, but rather straight forward to work with.

I thought I had put this up, but I must have only previewed the entry. 

A few weeks ago, I made Nancy Silverton's walnut bread, a consistent favorite with everyone who tries it. It is especially good with cheese. This time, I was inspired by a dessert we had at a new restaurant in New York called Maialino. The walnut bread supported some excellent marscapone and ripe California figs. The combination of tastes and textures in a single bite is positively decadent. 

Or maybe World Series Sourdough?!! [Go, Giants!!]

I have enjoyed Acme Bread’s Pain de Campagne a couple times recently.  It’s a moderately sour boule with a thin toothsome crust and a somewhat fluffy, but chewy crumb.  I think it has some whole rye flour and some whole wheat flour.  It's about my favorite bread ever.

The adventure continues!

In this weeks edition of Hamelman's Baguette's with Poolish, I made three modifications to the process from last week (well, more like two and a half:

Traditional baguette, Dragon tail and Épi de Blé (left to right)

Not happy with the commercially yeasted version I had been making for the holidays, I decided to try this one. It is just excellent. The crumb is creamy, with just enough tooth. The taste is rich, with that wonderful underlayer of complex sourdough flavor, not at all sour in this case.

I was inspired and guided by zolablue's post on the subject, as well as Maggie Glezer's video. Thanks so much to both.

Since I've never really been satisfied with my Ciabatta, I tried to do it in a more conservative way. I only used a 75% hydration dough, so the lower end of the Ciabatta range. Instead of doing the stretch & fold directly in the bowl with wet hands, I did it on the floured work surface, which took a little more time. I carefully followed the principle of the dough having an axis with two poles (the smooth side and the sticky side). The result was a dough that was so strong that I couldn't even really stretch it in order to cut out the pieces.