Blog posts

I just wanted to post this side-by-side of one of my first loaves and a more recent loaf to illustrate the importance of failing well. I believe that in endeavors such as this, there is no such thing as failure as long as you learn from it. I baked the loaf on the left on January 18th; the loaf on the right on February 5th. I baked a bunch in between, adjusting my methods, recipe, and handling techniques, all while taking a lot of notes. I also talked frequently with a friend who was further along than I was in baking this style of bread. 

I love bread. 70% total grain, home milled flour (57% wheat, 13% rye); 30% white flour (King Arthur); 80% hydration. I'm fairly new to natural yeast fermented baking, and brand new to this site. I baked this loaf a few weeks ago, and have been experimenting with a lot things since then to gain understanding of the inner workings of this beautiful and delicious food. Suffice it to say, none of them have turned out as well as this one (yet!) :)

Day 1 - Entry 1 - Doing the Research - March 7th, 2017 - 11:41 AM

We’ve begun research on our mission to create the best bread recipe we can by experimentation.  We have discussed what we will do and have created a recipe we hope will be successful.  Tonight Jack will be testing our recipe as Riley and I are busy.  

--

Day 1 - Entry 2 - March 7th, 2017 - 6:34 PM

At the bread tasting a couple of weeks ago, I made a series of six sourdoughs that all had the same formula and technique, with the exception of 25% of the flour being different. One of the popular ones was made with 25% Kamut flour. I was a little surprised that the Kamut seemed quite thirsty and also very strong. The dough seemed drier and much tighter than the doughs made with other flours. But the resulting bread was nice.

Double hydration mix with 75% hydration mixed flour levain and 100 % hydration AP poolish.

We are going to import organic grains from the US so we are looking for a small commercial grain mill, we were going to purchase the Hawos 200 BILLY Grain Mill, unfortunately due to the frecuency 50 Hz is not goig to work, we need 60 Hz.

Can someone please help me?

After a couple of months with little baking and lots of working, I was determined to bake this weekend - to just fit it in however I could. And this is the product of that effort, Barley Walnut Cranberry Loaf.

     Sometimes you feel like a nut....sometimes you don't.....Well I always love nuts; especially pecans!

For this bake I ground some fresh pecans in my mini food processor and added that to the levain with some AP and freshly milled whole wheat.  The idea was to get some extra pecan flavor into this bake and I think it worked.

Cranberries go great with pecans and also complimented the mix of freshly ground spelt, rye and whole wheat.  I added a little honey to give it a touch of sweetness.

This is today's bake. I got the recipe from sourdough by Sarah owens. It's a really good book if you haven't read it, the best thing about it is the fact that she provides loads of recipes to use leftover starter,  so you don't have as much waste.