Blog posts

The grandfather of the husband of one of our nieces (nephew-in-law?) died recently and my wife made a meal for his family.  I pitched in with ciabatta bread, using Reinhart’s ciabatta with poolish formula from BBA.  Since each loaf was a different size, we gave them the Papa Bear and Mama Bear sized loaves.  

Today's bake is again the Valais Rye   Walliserbrot (Switzerland) 2nd Time - The Rye Baker by Stanley Ginsberg.

This time with the adjustments suggested by my fellow TFL bakers (reduced proofing time and smoothing the top with a wet spatula).

I used a parchment paper lining  which made removal from the pan easy and had the added benefit of a vastly softer crust.

Dec. 1, 2021. Bake #71.

The taste of the previous batch of muffins was good, though perhaps a little too sweet. But they were way too dense, with no oven rise except for some tunneling because I added baking powder to the batter instead of dispersing it well in the dry flour.

This has less flour (therefore higher hydration), less honey, less oil, more baking powder, and the BP was properly dispersed in the flour. Other ingredients just had minor tweaks.

It's the last day of November. How time flies! :D I've been meaning to update my lil space here with my recent bakes but I never got to touch my laptop while I'm managing books (so many!), household stuff, (very late) knits, and some spinning and yoga. But, there are some bakes, of course.

Ah, a citrus-y sourdough loaf! I made a second batch of candied citrus peels as a bunch of them were included in the dark fruit cake that is now getting sloshed in the fridge - hopefully it turns out edible for Christmas.

Nov. 29, 2021.  Bake #70.

More photos of the clay pots and the instruction/recipe booklet at: https://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/69351/clay-flower-pot-baker-recipes

WARNING: Do not follow this recipe, #70. It did not turn out well. See my next blog entry, #71, for a much better batch: https://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/69373/71st-bake-120121-more-sotsot-clay-pot

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Soaker: 

The rye had amazing spring. I subbed my very active raisin yeast water but otherwise followed the gluten development and bake times exactly. Dough was fantastic to work with. Will post crumb when cool. Just took it from the oven . 

For this loaf I wanted to try sifting out the larger bran flakes.  I finally purchased a #40 sieve.  Taking all the flour, I sifted it through the #40 sieve extracting about 46.5 g of large course bran flakes from 492 g of the stoneground organic whole wheat flour.  I intended on scalding the bran, but made an error adding an equal part by weight of room temperature water then remembering that I wanted to scald so added the second equal part by weight boiled water.  The bran was mixed to ensure it was fully hydrated and then cooled overnight in the fr

We had lots of good food yesterday for Thanksgiving, but I was especially happy with the dinner rolls that I made using Maurizio's Super Soft Sourdough Rolls writeup.  As promised, these were soft, fluffy, baked up nicely tall, and just downright tasty.  Perfect with a little butter, and to mop up whatever was left on my plate!