Blog posts

Last week I posted about Abel's Semolina with pistachios, and I wasn't all A-Ok with my results, so back to the drawing board for me.  MTloaf correctly pointed out that I had miscalculated the overall hydration at 70%, rather than the 75% it would seem to be.  The correction to the formula sheet was made.  

I'd like to know the difference between a Portuguese roll in a Kaiser roll and when I said Portuguese roll I mean the hotter darker thicker type bread compared to the white lighter Kaiser roll type read in a town in in in a town called Hoboken New Jersey there is a bakery called Dominick's bakery they have the greatest bread you'll ever taste in the world but they don't make like Kaiser  type rolls than a soft and light they make like thicker darker heavier roles that are just fantastic I think it's it's like a Portuguese roll but they also make them long and a Portuguese rolls.

Hello, dear FreshLoafers,

For those of you in Europe, this programme might be interesting to watch;

https://www.arte.tv/fr/videos/080545-000-A/de-la-farine-au-four-quel-pain/

Available in French and German, not sure if this will be visible at all in North America.

All the best to all of you,

Carole

It has been a while since I made a loaf of bread.  Covid and health issues have just about made life as horrible and boring as can be among other things.  At least I can still drink a glass of wine a day:-) Lucy has really slowed down since she turned 17.  I had to make a ramp for her to get up on the bed and her hind quarters don't work as well as they used to - but she is hanging in there and a real trouper.

Very hot here. High temp around 110 F, so, to keep the kitchen cooler and reduce electricity use, i cooked a bread on our weber grill. I put a clay baker on to preheat for 15 min before loading the dough and cooking covered for 20 mins and then uncovered for another 20. The grill cover was on for all of it, besides to remove the clay baker cover. 

This bread was inspired by Derek's post from last week here. 

After Covid19 lockdown I was gifted 4 kg of flour and suddenly my bread improved greatly.  Now I am running low and so I went on line and ordered 10 kg, crossing my fingers that I had chosen the right flour.  Todays bake was a straight up white 1:2:3 with each flour. I added a little diastatic malt to help with caramelisation.

Method:

We loved the Kamut flavour in the last loaf I baked last week but wanted a stronger flavour from the Kamut.  This week I decided to inch up they percentage of Kamut to 30%.  Still being unsure about going higher because I wasn’t sure how thirsty Kamut is and what effect on the gluten it would have.  I increased the hydration to 78% with the assumption that more whole Kamut would make the dough thirstier.  I still think that the Kamut adds a lot of extensibility to the dough and doesn’t seem that thirsty compared to other whole grains.