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It's been abnormally hot in Deepest Lancashire (as with most of the UK) these past couple of months. So much so that my normal 900g batardes are going stale before we finish them. The obvious solution was to make something a bit smaller, so I split my usual dough quantity, based on 1kg flour, into three loaves, each around 670g unbaked weight.

I'm also currently exploring retarded bulk fermentation, so I incorporated that into this bake.

Flour mix

During the Champlain community bake I abandoned Trevor's premix method as it degraded my UK flours too much and I ended with soup...

Thinking a bit more about temperatures I thought what would happen if I were to do the 'premix' method but keep the dough 'cooler' rather than into fridge and then get to room temp. I used the 304g amount of water for 70% hydration as in his formula.

Hello friends!!

A couple of weeks ago, Abe posted a mid week bake. I've never done a mid week bake. I just couldn't figure out how to fit it into my work schedule (08:00 - 17:00). So Abe's post really inspired me to try it, and it worked!! I didn't miss a beat with my regular routine. 

Here's how it went: 

Monday:

1. Levain build, just before work. I used my cold starter straight from the fridge (20g NMNF rye starter, 40g whole wheat flour, 32g water). 

2. 17:00ish get home and autolyse flour and water for an hour. 

You know how bread (or specifically, naan) is perfect for soaking up every last drip of curry? And how addictive paneer curry dishes are? Palak paneer, methi malai paneer, paneer butter masala and achari paneer, to name but a few. Curry bread is definitely not a new idea. See the popular Japanese fried curry bread (Kare-Pan) for evidence.

Every now and then I go to Peter Reinhart's "Bread Revolution" for something different. I've been meaning to try sprouted pulp bread for some time, and the time was right. I have a sack of Kamut (Khorasan wheat) that I don't use much because it's just too hard and difficult to mill by hand. Like milling gravel into sand - the resulting flour is very coarse and sandy. I sprouted some a while back, dried it and milled it into flour, which was easier than the unsprouted grain but still time consuming to dry it properly.

Lucy was making up for lost time making two different breads.  One a 10% whole 5 grain yeast Naan and the other a 10% whole Kamut pizza dough.  The 5 grains for the Naan were red wheat, spelt, Kamut, rye and oat.  Both were made with and 10% pre-fermented whole grain flour poolish at 100% hydration and both dough flours were LaFama AP.   Overall hydration for both was 72%

Starter Preparation

Yesterday was our Oath-Taking ceremony. It was full of pride and joy. Why wouldn't we be proud and happy when I found out that I was 17th all over the country. I only prayed to pass and out 76,673 who took the licensure exam, only 22,936 passed and out of those 22,936, I am the 17th! To celebrate the occasion, I made this special bread.

I made a large, dense pagnotta foggiana over the weekend and the entire process went really well. Whole wheat flour for the biga with cornmeal mixed into the bread flour for the dough. Coarse, chewy, and crusty. Typical of Italian bread in general, maybe closely resembling a nice Pugliese loaf. 

I finally got around to baking this bread; had it bookmarked for ages! As it is blueberry season here, and I happened to have some cream cheese handy, I thought of it and went ahead and baked it. So good! Here's the original post (in case you don't have it bookmarked). :)