Blog posts

 We returned home from a summer of quasi-gluttony downing pint after pint of heavy but oh-so-tasty ales and enjoying virtually every dinner out at old favorite restaurants as well as newer in our old city of Portland.  Only to immediately make a U-turn out of here when the specter of hurricane Maria bore down on Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands and was barreling straight for us.  Upon return once more, I looked forward to reviving my sleepy levain and start baking again.  Which I did for a very short while.

Thanks to everyone's input, my second shot at this bake turned out much better. I might have underproofed the loaves a bit but at least, I got decent if not great oven spring. Here is the changed recipe:

1. Toast 100 g of buckwheat groats. Cover with hot water and let soak for an hour. Drain. Add 50 g of yogurt. 

This is one of those bakes that sort of comes together by accident. I had soaked some rye grains a while back, planning on using them in a pumpernickel, but it turned out I had soaked too much grain, so I drained the remainder and let them sit for a day. They sprouted (as they do), and I stuck the bowl in the fridge, planning on 'doing something' with them later. By the time I remembered to pull the bowl out a couple of days later they had mostly malted (i.e. they had a tangle of little rootlets along with the tiny sprouts).

First of all, if I write the wrong sentence, understand me. I can not writen English perfectly. I am not a professional or amateur baker. I just love bread person . And I like natural fermented bread. So, I make a natural fermentation starter.This time I will try an apple natural fermentation starter. Today that I have used the apple for the first time.And I am waiting now.

This is the first bake after using fresh milled flour from my new toy, the Mockmill 200.  My wife was nice enough to buy this for me as a present and I couldn't be happier.  I have the Kitchenaid mixer attachment Mockmill but this new stand-alone version is so much quicker it's well worth the investment.

Edit: embedding photos from Google didn't work, so here's a link to a gallery on imgur: https://imgur.com/a/xmVyw

Of course, if you're reading this is you're probably only after the money shot, so here it is:

I'm (essentially) following the Tartine recipe for whole wheat:

Ingredients:

800g bread flour, 200g organic sprouted spelt flour
674g cool water mix with 1 Tbsp apple cider vin 
300 g 100% hydration active San Francisco sourdough starter 
1 Tbsp diastatic malt powder 
15g salt
100g pate fermentee 

Method

1) Feed starter: mix 100g levain with 100g water and 100g bread flour for 4.5 hours. 

2) At the same mix flour, dry malt, and water in a food safe container, autolyse for 4.5 hours.

Hello TFLers! I missed you all along with baking and posting here. I realized that teaching is also one of my passions and I want to teach formally so I decided to study again. Yes, I am studying now to have units in education to be able to take the licensure exam and hopefully pass it so I can teach in a local high school. What's better than having a "job" where you can combine two or more of your passions; I might just teach cooking or even baking.

Just a short post, I'm in the middle of test construction and I just really want to hear from you again.