Blog posts

Most fathers recant their fantastical endeavors to their children, often subjecting them to recollections of transient glimpses of glory, be it "that one time when..." or the figurative - or sometimes literal - "Big Fish".

My father instead opted to describe his affection for croissants.

To err in light of bread is not too err at all...

A terse, yet alarmingly pedantic, narrative:

After a brief to a local Le Pain Quotidien, my mother -the conductor of this crazy carbohydrate train- produced and prompted me to taste what I could only describe as the instigator of a newfound obsession: the walnut-raisin sourdough loaf.

Very Berry Pie

By, Will Falzon

Ingredients

1. 2 pie crust 9” (My recipe to follow)

2. 32 oz. Frozen mixed berries

3. 1 Pink Lady apple, grated and squeezed dry

4. ½ Cup Brown sugar (Not Packed)

5. 1 Tsp. Lemon juice

6. ¼ Cup Balsamic Glaze

7. ½ tsp. Salt

8. 1/3 Cup Tapioca Flour

    

Instructions.

Preheat oven to 350F. 15Min. Before the pie is ready for the oven

                                                       Where there's a will, there's a way.

These past two years I haven't baked much sourdough bread. Since I left Petraia I've been working with a pretty poor oven. But recently a friend inspired me to try baking with a cast-iron combo-cooker. After testing the technique the first thing I did was to pay a visit to the Mulino Marino in Italy's Piedmont region where I have been sourcing flour for over 20 years.  I picked up a supply from their wonderful stone ground range including farro, enkir, macina di grano, burrata, and rye.

This bread takes two days to make and it needs to rest for 24 hours until it can be cut into. You have to prepare 3 different starters (a preferment and two soakers), have to then boil the rye berries, I even had to crack the rye berries using a manual coffee grinder as I couldn't find any cracked rye. Then the loaf needs to bake for 14 hours at a low temperature (yes, you read that right, 14 hours) and rest for another 24, whilst you are out there drooling next to it.

The interesting thing here is that both loaves were from the same dough. You can't really see in the picture but the rise was very different. One proofed in a linen lined bowl and one in a banneton.  The one in the bowl didn't split for some reason and is much smaller.  They smell great though, hopefully they will taste good too.  I took my inspiration from Dani's current and honey loaf. I'm just starting to get brave enough to try putting my own spin on things. 

Fellow weir-doughs, 

Here's a timelapse video I took to evaluate and compare how my sourdough develops when fed with just bread flour, versus 50% BF and 50% rye flour.  I used filtered water. 

/Mark

I was trying to come up with something different when I realised that I some left over mashed potato in the fridge.  So based on dmsnyder's recipe from 31 May 2009 I came up with this:

Bread flour 629 gm

7 grain flour 240 gm

Spelt flour 30 gm

Mashed potato 145 gm

salt 18 gm

water 521 gm

SD levain 198 gm