Blog posts

have been looking for the perfect loaf to go with the many cheeses I always have in my fridge and I believe I am on to something. :) I have prepared this though on a weekend and baked it straight from the fridge on a Monday morning - it definitely chased away my Monday morning blues. 

I love how the buttery and nutty taste of the kamut and spelt compliment the sweetness of the figs and the rolled oats that cover the loaf make the crust extra crunchy. 

There it goes:

1. Prepare your starter in advance.

2. Leave to rest for 8-12 hours.

After Abel posted his 90% Biga @45% hydration (70% overall) a few heads were turned and some fast commitments made to reproduce this bread.  Mine too.  Some questions were left unanswered, i.e. the optional levain hydration, baking temp and time.  So some jeri-rigging was needed. 

Biga hand mixed, not "crumbly" as advised.

Final dough ingredients incorporated.

These 3 miniloaves, approximately 300 grams each, were made from the same dough, kneaded and bulk fermented all together. It is 75% hydration whole wheat (all red spring wheat) plus 2% salt- simple lean dough. About 4.5 hr bulk fermented at room temp, about 23 C/74 F. Divided, preshape, shape, put on floured towel. Final proof was 1 hr for right one, 1.5 hr for middle, 2 hrs for left. Middle and left look about the same and a bit better than right. But not sure it wasn’t just better shaping and scoring. 

Will find out later what the inside looks like. 

I took the Tartine Country Rye recipe and added whole wheat.

Ingredients:

• 300g bread flour
• 115g whole wheat
• 85g rye flour
• 400g water
• 100g mature levain 
• 10g salt

After combining (yesterday afternoon) and a few turns in the bucket, that dough sat in the fridge overnight. This morning I went to shape it and had a hard time working with it. Just that little bit of Rye really made it sticky. But the good news is that my starter did just fine!

These were made as gifts for some of my office colleagues.  I ended up keeping one for tasting purposes :0.

I used hand milled durum and whole wheat both sifted and a little KAF bread flour.  The ricotta was added for some extra softness and that combined with the olive oil made for a nice smooth dough.  I added some smoked and black sesame seeds as a topping and on 2 of the breads topped it with some melted cheese.

The bread turned out great with a nice nutty flavor from the durum and a soft crumb.

I've been very quiet -- mainly because I've spent the last year baking the same recipe over and over, tweaking it slightly until I've got it completely reproducible. I've varied the additions (various seeds, dried fruits, etc.), but the base bread has been the same. For 2018, I'm going to venture out of this comfort zone and get more experimental again.

Lucy is back to making white bread batards with a small bran levain.  But this one was a bit different in a couple of 3 ways.  First off, the levain was a white one that was retarded for a week after it was built and the bran didn’t go in until the day before the bake as build number 4.

I performed my due diligence (old IT terms die hard!) and came up empty when looking to see whether anyone on the internet had posted a reference to the FWSY Field Blend #1 as baguettes.  So the door was swung open for me to get in “first”.

It's been a busy couple weeks since I've posted. Two notable things have happened: Louis has been misbehaving, and I took a brioche/challah class. 

Dec 4th: I can't remember what this was, but I'm guessing a 50% whole wheat overnight boule.