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Lucy was more giddy than usual with this week’s baking experiment that actually ended up making bread instead of a scientific oddity – as seen on TV.  The premise was simple enough.  Do as little as possible and then do less than that but still squeeze in moderate glass of wine – in a plastic glass of course.

 See it is more matt.  I took the picture out to protect the innocent

Image

whew....I think that says it all !  Date yeast water has been stored in fridge. Still going strong and I had added water to the used dates to see how it would hold up. So far so good. Levain loves Kamut . It filled the jar in a matter of a couple hours so I stored in fridge. Using up many flours from Breadtopia in an effort to move forward with grinding my own grains. These three loaves are the proportions that I used for the buns except I used more grains in the mix to = 532g. I used my Middle Eastern date syrup instead of maple syrup.

Well, not sure where my head was yesterday, it was perhaps a comedy of errors but I didn't think that as I put the dough in the fridge to proof overnight.  Start at the beginning. Three different bakes, 1 small loaf each. 

Monday 13:30 refresh 60% ish starter 10 g = 20 water + 30 flour

21:30 pm mix three levains and leave overnight on bench.  it was cool overnight - only 18 deg C when I got up next morning/

Tuesday 7 am - put levains in a cooler part of the pantry as I would not need till after lunch.

11:45 am Country Champlain.  Mix together

Another double levain dough. I joined a facebook group that uses only yeast waters for baking. Wow....there is SO much info and amazing pictures of breads etc. Anyway I got my feet wet , so to speak with date water. I took a small amount of my AYW and inoculated it with 6 dried dates. Whoa...stand back !  It was full of bubbles in just a couple hours using the lights in my oven to warm it. I added a piece of orange peel, as I do with my apple yeast water, as I think it keeps it from getting too much  alcohol formation. 

733g unbleached KA

266g Spring WW

BASIC SOURDOUGH BOULE, 70% HYDRATION, 80% TYPE 550 BIODYNAMIC FLOUR FROM SPIELBERGERMUEHLE AND 20% MACINATO INTERO DI FARRO FROM MULINO MARINO. RETARDED 18 HOURS. BAKED IN A COMBI OVEN ON A BAKING STEEL, WITH THE COMBO COOKER COVER FOR THE FIRST 15 MINUTES. 

First a shout out to JustJoel whose post lit a fire under me to get this post finished!

European Peasant Loaf

I am continuing my quest, as one of many others, for getting better oven spring and open crumb. This is my adaptation of Trevor’s European Peasant Bread.

Recipe:

150 g freshly milled spelt

150 g freshly milled rye

150 g Arva Mills whole wheat flour

820 g unbleached flour

50 g freshly ground flax

850 g filtered water

23 g Himalayan pink salt

30 g kefir

280 g 100% hydration levain (procedure for this is in recipe)

One of these kids is not like the others one of these kids is doing his own thing (a little sesame street jingle to introduce today's bake models).