Blog posts

since before Christmas.  You know how it is, down in the bottom of the fridge hidding between the spuds and onions.  Na ya, keep or toss?  Opened the bag and removed the top inch of kraut.  Hmmm, about a cup of nice juice and great smelling sauerkraut in there.  Put it into glass added a little water and sprinkled several heaping soupspoonfuls of white wheat on top.  Stirred in making a milky lumpy thin batter.  Covered and came bake later to notice nothing going on.  Next day nothing.  Ah, waking up the sleepy beasties.

My starter was very cooperative for ages, but recently has changed personalities. It used to reach max height in around 12 hours and float for another 4-5 hours, regularly. That was with a 1:2:2 feeding. Now, it rises and begins to deflate within 6 hours, even with a 1:3:3 feeding. Moreover, it only floats for a minute at most before sinking. Has anyone else had this experience? And what did you do? I am beginning to suspect that the air in my kitchen may be bad, which fills me with dread.

Thanks.

Once again using my favourite sourdough pizza dough recipe that was written by Will the Pie King and shared during the Community Bake, I made a Marinated Artichoke and Olive sourdough pizza.  Actually I made two 9-10” pizzas tonight and will make another two tomorrow.  In the past I have usually cold retarded them for 48 and 72 hours.  This time I wanted to see what would happen if I cold retarded for 72 and 96 hours.  Well tonight of course was the 72 hours and the dough performed as expected, very well.

It's been a while since I posted.  I have been baking but just have not had the patience to post.  I made this bake about a month ago.  I finally got around to sprouting some grains and did some whole wheat from Barton Mills and some purple corn which both were ground into flour using my Mock Mill 200.  I also ground some black barley into flour and added that as well for some extra flavor.

I added some caramelized onions which are always one of my favorites.

Aiming for consistent performance while varying the ingredients.

First up, breads:

20% corn, 30% sprouted durum, 50% kamut, 7% olive, 1% dried basil

40% sprouted einkorn, 10% sorghum, 50% blue emmer, 15% hazelnuts, 2% coffee

I don’t have a proper oven, In my previous blog posts I would go to my relatives to bake which is not ideal, anyway I found that using a pan loaf is a great way to bake in a “toaster oven”. You also get even slices and it’s easier to store and toast.

My pan is 19.7cm x 10.6cm x 11cm.

First I tried a 340g loaf (300g + the ~40g in the starter) It’s a cute loaf (image above) but you can fit more in there.

Hey, guys.
 What's good? I am off from work next week so, that's always good on my end!
Lets get down to brass tacks. I am pretty proud of this loaded up pie! I made the movie because it's easier. I don't think it will go on my YouTube.

I decided to venture into enriched breads this week and make Pain de Mie from The Perfect Loaf: https://www.theperfectloaf.com/pain-de-mie/ 

One more step....

Process

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/51572/vermont-sd-baguettes-course

Scaled to around 240g each.

First four below were made with the baking set up described in Baguettes II

Baking process