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So my virginal sourdough starter finally got big and healthy enough for me to actually use it last Friday. In a frenzy to use my new pet, I baked two loaves on Saturday. The first was a "traditional" idea of a basic sourdough loaf, with a lot of wholegrains. If I recall, the flour was about 50/30/20 between white, wholemeal and wholemeal spelt flour. It was on the low end of what I've learned to be acceptable hydration, mainly because I made the rookie error of spending too much time handling the bread and, worried about stickiness, kept adding more flour.

Hey, it's a baking site; enough with the sniggering already.

So I had this post about half-written and managed to blow it away with an ill-placed click of the mouse.  Since I don't feel like recreating it, this will be the condensed version.

It's warm enough for grilling and smoking to begin in earnest.  That means buns are coming to the fore again.

This was one of those, what was I thinking breads.  I had read about a porridge bread someone else posted about where they soaked the cracked rye overnight in water, and for some reason that translated to me as let's soak whole durum berries in water overnight and make a porridge from them.  I should have known that I didn't do something right when the porridge was taking forever to solidify and didn't absorb all of the water as usual.  Next time I need to either crack the durum berries first or soak them overnight in hot boiling water.  The berries were soft when added

Recept és videó Farkas Vilmos oldalán!

Első próbálkozásom, fonott kalács hat szálból.
Farkas Vilmos receptje szerint készítettem, nagyon finom lett.

The third installment in my yeast water experiment and I'm getting to really like the stuff. All the grains are fresh ground and sifted to between 90 and 95% extraction depending on the grain except the corn. All the water besides that in the leaven build is yeast water, white wheat was used for the build as well as the  sifted out  brans. The other grains were a sprouted multigrain mix (millet, rye, einkorn, and turkey red), Masa Harina, Einkorn, and Red Fife. The leaven build was started early AM, the dough mixed late AM, and the loaf baked late afternoon.

I tried the Rye Porridge bread from Tartine 3 the other day. I like this bread a lot - it provides a very nice sour-ish rye flavour with the texture of a good wheat levain. Very moist crumb and the bread benefits from sitting for 24 hours before slicing it. I followed the recipe but did not add any nuts or nut oil as Robertson makes them optional and I don't particularly like nuts in my bread. I also changed the method. I was not having much success with Robertson's methods (room temperature bulk ferment with a long shaped proof in the fridge; always over-proofed).

I've been working with the same formula for my sourdough, changing one thing with each bake and taking notes. The basic formula is as follows. 

300g levain

350g flour

200g water

10g salt