Blog posts

I have attempted to repeat my first bake for 2018 and do it better.  

Starter refresh Friday morning

mixed 10 g starter 20 g water 30 g flour and left on bench. Room temp was 23°c

8 pm took 7 g from this added 28 g water & 28 g flour mixed and left on bench overnight.

Saturday 9:30 am mixed up levain for

bake #1 1:2:3 with 20% freshly milled rye 10% freshly milled spelt

27 g starter 118 g water and 118 g flour. leave to mature 

 bake #2 1:2:3 with 20% new season yeast water (raspberry)

I've been meaning to buy a proofing box, but I figured it was too little for how much it cost. I needed a proofing box that would be able to have a normal size sheet pan fit in it so I would have enough room for proofing breads and, when needed, I can make my yogurt as well.

I made a quadruple batch of the Borodinsky for half-loaf Xmas gifts.  It was an ordeal that required the assistance of my wife.  Stressful as it was, nothing went wrong, and the results were about as good as my maiden attempt a few weeks earlier.  Scaling up is very difficult in a home kitchen, as the photos show in part.  The dough had to be spooned into the loaf pans, whereas when I made a single loaf I was able to scrape it in the pan neatly in one piece.  All in all, I won't be doing this again anytime soon, but I'm glad it was successful.

Anybody who's seen txfarmers sourdough croissants knows it doesn't get much better so having recently booted another round of stsryers and having a bit of an aversion to sourdough bread (just due to flavor) thought I'd give txfarmers formula a shot.  So far although nowhere near in the ballpark of txfarmer I'm pretty happy and think I may havw found a good challenge.  What I like about the sourdough formula is the added elasticity it seems to provide to dough.

Since I got a few bread books as Christmas presents, (“Baking by Hand” and “Simply Bread”), I got a few more ideas for add-ins. As well, reading several of the posts (Leslie, Marianna, et al) on there in addition to Trevor’s book, I got inspired to try a few new things. 

I coped this from the Breadtopia website (https://breadtopia.com/brie-flower-bread-rolls/).

I am very impressed with the outcome. The was this morning's bake:

Back on the site after a long hiatus, though I've been baking away! Thought I'd post some photos of my version of Hanseata's butter croissants recipe!

I’ve been working on consistency with my bake of 100% fresh milled whole wheat sourdough for the last several weeks ( about 4 loaves a weekend since thanksgiving). 

I think I’ve got what I want for my family’s basic bread. Soft texture, airy enough crumb, blistered and thin crust. And, importantly, 3 bakes in a row that are about the same. ?

formula: ( with dough mix time equals t-zero)

-12 hrs: refresh refridgerater starter 1:2:2. I use 100% starter 

-2 hrs: mix 400 gr flour and 300 gr water until all dry stuff is wet (shaggy mass)

This is an unusual enriched bread for me!

I started with Hamelman's levain bread with increased wholewheat recipe, but having seen some breads including cream cheese I could imagine how soft and creamy and substantial the crumb would be! I decided to add quite a bit of cream cheese, guessing that it would not add that much hydration, so I wouldn't need to make too many changes.

I usually work from Hamelman's metric recipes, but make 1/20th of the recipe, which gives on each large loaf. It fits in my casserole and it's by far the easiest way to scale down. 

At some point I started to occasionally snap a photo halfway through the baking cycle, after steam was released and the loaves rotated.  Ordered from oldest to most recent.

David-based (Son of) SJSD

PiPs 100% WW

WoodenSpoon's 33% Rye Levain