Blog posts

In my blog last week I mentioned that I had the levains all ready to go and was frightfully confident that the dough would be cooperative with my intention of a relaxing mix day...

Well - the weather decided to go in to random mode, and we had storm fronts rolling in from all directions fighting with high pressure fronts that thought we should be clear and sunny instead.  It's a lousy shot (I'm a lousy photographer), but here's one of the cloud fronts traveling by:

I really like making porridge breads - they allow the flavour of whatever grain is in the porridge while keeping the texture of a nice wheat-based sourdough. Creamy, moist, chewy and with a nice crust. I especially like using rye flakes this way as rye flour can be notoriously difficult to work with and really changes the texture of the bread.

Nearly murdered my KitchAid to make this shreddably fluffy pillow of brioche. It's around 40% butter, leavened with a combination of sourdough levain, poolish plus a bit of dry yeast. IT SMELLED LIKE PEACHES ???? AFTER MIXING and the dough was literally a pillow. I made a mini loaf and a bunch of brioche tartlets (lemon parmesan thyme, mango pistachio cardamom, blueberry lemon curd).

Back home now, with all my baking equipment, so I thought I'd re-create the no-measure bread I made on holiday last week, only measuring stuff this time so I could bake it again, and scale it for different sized batches. The original adventure is recorded in my blog post here.

This time, just for something a bit different, I made the poolish with white whole wheat flour. It's 100% hydration, 100 grams each of flour and water and about 1/4 tsp of active dry yeast.

What I ate for 6 days in Western Europe

A paper I wrote about baking was recently accepted by an artificial intelligence conference in Trondheim, Norway. I decided to make the most of my trip and visited as many countries as possible in my 6 days abroad. Below I have provided a list of the foods I sampled:

Day 1

Germany

Rosinenschnecke (Pain aux Raisin)

France

Roggenbrot mit Sauerteig, Broetchen (Sourdough Rye bread with roll)

Crocque Monsieur Grilled Cheese with cured meat) + Salad + Rose aux Provence (

Foccacia di Recco - 62% hydration King Arthur Bread Flour, Pillsbury Bread Flour, King Arthur All Purpose Flour, Gold Medal All Purpose Flour, Bobs Red Mill Whole Wheat Pastry Flour (left to right) - July 1, 2017

I saw MutantSpace's loaf from a question he/she asked and loved the look of the crumb. I do plan to make it as posted but I needed a few loaves this weekend and thought I would just adapt it to sourdough. I think I may have messed up in the salt though and not put enough in. I will know when we taste it.

This recipe made 4 quite small loaves although you could divide it 3 for larger loaves. I wasn't sure that the larger loaves would fit in my Dutch ovens and I wasn't making any for sale so the smaller loaves were just fine. 

After last week’s 99% white bread, Lucy nearly went into shock with the Dark Side Heebie Jeebies.  Yes, there is such a thing as fatal HJ’s but Lucy has an app for that.  So, this week she went dark starting with prunes and Deshuette’s Black Porter, 61.3% wholegrain rye and 38.7% whole grain red and white wheat. 

Well, we're on holidays again. I usually try to bake at least once during any week that we're away, and have to make do with whatever equipment is available. We're at our usual resort (nice units, good kitchens but a little dated now) and I was expecting a certain number of baking items to be available. Alas, it was not to be!

For the love of a simple sourdough. We have been gradually packing up our home for an interstate move next month and the baking has been neglected. Using up the leftover flour and sourdough starter this week. Looking forward to a new life and lots more baking.