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Hey everyone, 

It's a long weekend here and I am glad am able to report back on my baguette baking journey. First of all, I would like to thank Alan (Alfanso) for taking the time and guided me to baking Bouabsa's Baguette. I must admit I got a little lost along the translation when going through the formula. And out of curiosity, went to Youtube and search for some visual guidance and bing.....here comes Alan with his comprehensive video, bravo Alan. Should have told me earlier : )

I had a few things that I wanted to experiment with this week:

     - using a stiff (66% hydration) levain instead of a liquid (100% hydration) levain

     - using a whole wheat levain instead of all rye

     - changing the timing for using the levain to waiting until it had peaked and fallen for a couple of hours and then retarding in the fridge for a day or so

This weekend's baking project comes to you courtesy of pantry leftovers!

So I asked the wife what dried fruit we had on hand. We have cherries in the fridge and raisins in the pantry. The raisins sport a 'best sold by' date of Oct. last year, so I thought it might be best to use those up. Nearby I spied some walnuts. Then I Googled for a recipe and came across this lovely...

Country Sourdough with Walnuts + Raisins

Total Flour – 100% - 560G

Total Liquid - 64% - 360G

Mother:

100% Hydration Whole Wheat starter.  480G

(Flour Red W.W. – 240G, /Water 240G)

Finale Dough:

Flour White W.W.  – 320G

Whole Milk – 120G

Butter – 60G

Honey – 40G

1 egg – 54 G

Salt – 8 G

Procedure: 

This was a crazy week and Lucy is about as happy as I have ever seen her.  There was so much new, interesting and good news fr where we live it was just amazing.  I have to admit that I am pretty well walking on clouds myself.

I've been baking rye sourdoughs over the last few days, for a special customer request. They turned out fairly nice, but I still have challenges with my rye starter staying strong enough to rise the bread properly. As a result some of them were a bit dense and wet (unlike the previous rye bake, where they rose nicely; not sure where the difference lies). Still fairly happy with them. From left to right they are:

Last week I posted my first run of the Hamelman Vermont SD as baguettes.  Quite happy with the results.  But a recent thread started by ifaey about problems with higher protein baguettes had me rethinking my own run.  

This bread was inspired by dabrownman and lucy’s “a special Saturday” sprouted multigrain bread (April 14). He commented on my 100% sprouted struan bread (April 16) and suggested I should try making this bread, since I wanted something with similar characteristics to the Vermont sourdough.

Hello everyone,

I have a question of this flour "  King Arthur Special Patent Flour " , which I found at local bakery supply wholesaler.

SPECIAL PATENT

12.7% Protein.50% AshMalted, Enriched

Well friends, I have had this appliance for a month or so now and LOVE it! Vacuum sealing food in plastic keeps it fresher, longer, saves space in my freezer and compared to double zip locked bags, I can actually see what is sealed and frozen.

My soft pull apart dinner rolls have stayed baking day fresh, shrink wrapped and frozen. You just need to stop the vacuum motor before it squishes the rolls, breads etc. What sold me on the product was the idea, I could re-heat my slow smoked BBQ pulled pork butt sous vide style. I comes out just like day one pulled pork.