Blog posts

This is a follow-up of the recently concluded rye experiments, where it was established that:

1) A straight starter loaf gave a softer texture compared to a levain loaf (PFF 40%, all rye), fermentation time (16 hours) and dough components held constant, but

2) A straight starter loaf had less oven spring and was harder to shape than the levain loaf, though the straight starter loaf had an airier, less tight crumb.

3) The difference in taste was not that discernible. 

Dec 14

I love adding beer to sourdough bread. I’m not a big beer drinker but the malty flavor it imparts is amazing and Guinness is one of my favorites to use.

The sour cream added extra moisture to the crumb, and the caramelized onions imparted a wonderful sweet onion flavor.

I used King Arthur high-gluten flour since I didn’t have any first clear flour, along with some fresh-milled Danko Rye (milled from Barton Springs Mill berries).

I believe I found this recipe in Bake From Scratch if I’m not mistaken.  I love the idea of emulating a jelly filled dough in a cake.  The filling is homemade and although I increased the fruit in the recipe significantly and dropped the sugar by 50%, the filling I think could still be less sweet.  I like making extra jam for my morning yoghurt which is why I doubled the amount of fruit.  I also used frozen fruit since fresh is very expensive this time of year.  I haven’t sliced the cake yet since it is for a dinner party tonight.

I loved my last loaf but when I made it, my starter hadn’t been refreshed enough times to rev it up after my time away.  I loved the bread but thought it would be better with a more vigorous fermentation.  Things went much more as expected with this bake.  This took a total of 3 hours less time despite the same temperatures for fermentation. As well, the rise was much greater despite the shorter time, no surprise.  The final rise at the time of baking was 115%.

More Christmas baking today, I baked a pair of apple cranberry holiday cakes with lemon icing for more gifting.  I had a little extra batter that didn’t fit in the loaf pans so put that in two ramekins so we could taste this cake.

Following the most recently concluded einkorn experiments, I decided to plunge headlong into levain build experiments, but this time with rye.

One of my usual rye breads is a 45% dark rye bread, 75% hydration, with all the rye fermented for 11 hours in an overnight levain (thus PFF is also 45%). BF and proof the next day for 4-5 hours, baked on the same day.

Now that I’ve finished my last locum of the year I finally have time to get some Christmas baking done for the people I like to thank each year.  Today’s bake was for the staff in our condo.

I’m using my standing sweet roll dough, which doesn’t have any added sugar to the mix other than that in the Stiff Sweet Levain.  As usual I use a stiff sweet levain in order to reduce the sourness of the bread.  The filling has cinnamon along with Chinese five spice and my homemade miso.  The frosting is a cream cheese frosting with a bit of miso for colour and umami.

Before panettone, I tested my new LM starter. I choose to try something of quality... Wildfarmed is a brand in the UK that promotes regenerative farming practices headed up by former DJ and music producer Andy Cato. This bag says its from UK and French wheat, protein is low at 10.x%.

This was circa 70% hydration. I don't have any notes to describe what I did...

I did a flour water only autolyse at 55% hydration for about 3 hours.

Until recently I was busy working hard making English Sparkling wine for a large UK producer, we collectively processed 2000 tonnes of grapes! Now harvest is over it's time to get baking again and of course it is panettone season...

In addition to making wine at scale I have a few vines and make my own. I do spontaneous fermentation and I used this as a source of naturally occurring yeasts.

It's been several weeks since then and I have made three panettones (one per week) with my new LM starter.

Also I have been using a new formula - my own!

I asked the husband for a bread challenge yesterday and he said why not make an airy and not dense free-form 100% ancient grain loaf?

I thought I might as well take the opportunity to conduct some experiments regarding hydration levels of levains, pH levels and resulting crumb/taste. Since I didn't have enough emmer left, I went with einkorn. (Forgot I had an unopened bag of Khorasan in the cabinet - damn! Next time.)

I began last night by making three different levains.