Blog posts

This was my first pizza using Italian 00 flour. It was noticeably more slack and extensible than the strong bread flour I am used to working with. Boy did it make great pizza crust! Home made tomato gravy topped with fresh basil, fresh mozzarella, Hungarian salami, (my favourite!), prosciutto and Reggiano parmigiana.  Great pizza!  I need to start another dough batch.

Total recipe was 350 g flour @ 73% hydration.  I used 50g liquid levain, 30g durham semolina and 295g 00 flour, and 7g salt.

Just wanted to show off my successful new slashing style!

Sourdough boule - Starter 785 g, water 245 g, bread flour 545 g, sea salt 17 g - knead 5 min with dough hook, rest 5 min, knead 5 min with dough hook, shape, rest 20 min, reshape, rise in frig ~ 20 hours, slash, 30 min 450 degrees, 20 min 400 degrees... try not to cut into until done cooling on rack

So Finally I did a Danish Rugbrot.  I got the recipe on line and altered it only a little bit.  It is loaded with: rye berries, cracked rye, wheat berries, bulgur wheat, flax seed and sunflower seeds.  No commercial yeast at all. And no coloring.

Back home and baking again. A new starter bubbling away on the counter. 

My daughter is going to party with a bunch of her Chi Oh Friends from college tomorrow and they are making Bruschetta.  Guess who gets to supply the bread by request – Lucy! Ever since she made her way to the Pumpkin Cover, she has been in big demand – at least in her head.

I followed Chad Robertson's recipe for country rye loaf here, flavour is great, sweet and nutty, although crumb is a little firm

One of my recent efforts, using a refreshed wheat starter based on pineaple juice. The loaf reasonably tasty and crusty - I wished for more air bubbles but perhaps the amount of seeds makes the dough heavier? Either that, or it should have had higher hydration, but it was damn sticky already and not that easy to work with!

Here's how, and below the result.

Tonight I experimented with Russian bread "Stolichny". It was baked with liquid levain. It is the GOST-bread. (GOST (Russian: ГОСТ) refers to a set of technical standards maintained by the a regional standards organization in USSR). 

Levain for this bread needs 3-phase refreshing. On the first two refreshings I added a little bit of barley flour (it will be about 10% of all flour). 

what is too hot for a starter to be kept at if not in the fridge, it gets hot here I can keep in cupboard but still will be 30C plus some days unless we have the aircon on