Nov 20, 2021.
Went shopping at a tiny Russian grocery store in Carmel, the suburb just north ot Indianapolis. I got some rye flour from Lithuania, a Russian salt/spice/herb blend, 2 loaves of different kinds of rye bread (made in the Chicago IL area), and a Russian sweet cream cheese spread.
Bread and cheese spread in next post.
Had the opportunity this weekend to make a couple of loaves that I've been wanting to try. First time breads are SO MUCH easier when you have a detailed method to follow, and I certainly have to tip my hat to Gavin for his explanation of Debra Wink's 100% WW loaf and David for the detailed method of his Jewish Sour
Why Borodinsky Bread?
I've been wanting to make a rye bread but was a little shy due to my concerns about heaviness and bitterness. I first encountered deli style rye probably at a diner when I was a teen. I wanted something darker, like pumpernickel I've had (although I realize it was probably a cheater pumpernickel using cocoa, coffee and molasses). For the past month, I've been incorporating some helpful scalding, sprouting and malting techniques into my ugly baguettes to develop those skills.
I have been making a starter and it was doing okay i think. I wasn't being very rigid with it, but it was living and smelled amazing. I am currently trying to create bread with it. I have low hopes as of the stage of mixing it into dough as it just seems off but I will update this when I get closer to the end.
A few hours later...
I wanted to try this recipe again but with more of the porridge and cooked a bit longer. I increased the porridge to 15% and cooked it with half milk and water. However, in order to keep the porridge moist during cooking, an unspecified about of water was added. The porridge is kept at room temperature covered until the next day.
I’m a bit out of practice making pastry. I usually only bake a pie when we have friends over for dinner. So with the pandemic it has been a while since I made one. For this pie I decided to try Kate McDermott’s all butter pastry from her book Art of Pie.
Traditional Art of the Pie All-Butter Dough
An all-butter crust is not as flaky as a butter and leaf lard crust, but the flavor can’t be beat.
FOR ONE DOUBLE-CRUST PIE OR TWO SINGLE-CRUST PIES
INGREDIENTS
2½ cups (363 grams) all-purpose flour, unbleached
½ teaspoon (3 grams) salt
Our building's A.M. is retiring at the end of this month and we wanted to give her something to take home in the most alfanso way. Sesame Semolina and Ciabatta.
My wife's contribution were her fabulous orange chocolate chunk meringue cookies.
Nov. 17, 2021. 69th bake.
Continuing along the lines of the last several bakes, this was about 300 grams of BRM WW red wheat and about 100 grams of Patel stone-ground WW durum.
Tweaks: Full 2% salt this time. No milk. 1 hr autolyse with salt. All sourdough this time, 41 grams, no commercial yeast. 1 tsp of ground-toasted bread spice*, plus another 1/2 tsp of whole caraway. 10 grams whole chia seed pre-soaked in 40 grams water.
Did 100 folds of "kneading in the air" prior to some stretch-and-folds during bulk.
I bake 2 loaves of country bread once a week always with slightly varying formulas and methods. This week I tried only feeding my levin once a day for the whole week and building up to the amount of levain I needed on bake day by feeding it twice before mixing into dough. Previously I had started feeding levain twice a day 3 days before bake and three times a day starting 2 days before. I tried this new method in order to minimize waist since I rarely use levain for other purposes and to go through flour less quickly.
We've been traveling. It seems a bit odd to say that we are vacationing, since we are retired, so “traveling” might be the better verb. Last week we were in Nashville, TN. This week we are in Sapphire, NC.
