Blog posts

  Hello all at thefreshloaf.com and thank you for allowing my participation on this extraordinary site.  The following article is one I wrote on another site, using their format and must admit that I'm taking a shortcut to copy and paste it here in the interest of saving time.  Though it is my first here, it is a continuance of several articles entitled Food Porn:_____ (fill in the blank with object of culinary desire).  I am eager to share this recipe I developed for Sriracha Bagels, due to the lack of them on the market and my love for the spice (explained within).

A recent post by Stan Ginsberg on his Berliner Landbrot apparently had David Snyder by hook line and sinker, and he posted his version on TFL too.  I figured that I'd give it a whirl myself.  Now I don't have much experience with breads that are heavily reliant on rye flour, just about never do boules, and had to search the back of the closet for my used once before proofing basket.  But I was game.

After last weeks; 7 starter 17 grain sprouted bred it was time to tame it down because we are out of white bread.  We love white bread but have found that one with multi sprouted whole grains really makes it taste so much better, plus it is much healthier – it even smells better too!

Hello! This is my first post on TFL, after a year of following along as I've begun bread baking. I'm looking forward to participating occasionally and enjoying this wonderful community! 

I started a liquid levain on January 1st, and named him Munchkin. He's contributed to a number of sourdough loaf experiments with darker flours. Both loafs pictured were from a "pain de campagne" recipe I adapted and had great flavour!  

Nothing beats the aroma of breads baking in the oven, especially in blistery cold winter days, when going out is an adventure to be avoided. Smell of these breads would surely bring excitement and anticipation in the kitchen. That's before you taste the breads. Another big flavor bread I like, besides the caramelized onion bread, is the carrot walnut bread from Jeffrey Hamelman. Moistened crumb and specks of carrot brighten any wintery day. What are your favorite aromatic breads? Feel free to weigh in on this.

Well, I am excited. For the first time I created a recipe from scratch, not from a published recipe or modified from anyone else's recipe. I created it in a spreadsheet based on my own experience gained over the last year of intensive baking (knowledge of hydration, percentages, flour performance, etc.) and then went ahead and mixed. I only made one small change during mixing and the whole thing was a great success!

So here it is - The Lazy Loafer's Barley Apple bread:

Starter:

Here are a couple of the loaves baked for the Valentines weekend.

Bread flour, spelt, rye and levain. Pretty basic formula. The challenge was in the shaping and still getting a good oven spring. Worked out well they were a hit. Hope everyone had a nice day.

Alright, so this is Hamelman's Country Bread (50% preferment).

To me these two loaves look really over shaped. The cross sections would be far rounder than I think is appropriate. Also, the scoring to me looks as if it needs to be far deeper (I was trying to get ears and boy this is far from that!).

Can you help me diagnose what went wrong here?

Hamelman's 5-Grain Levain is always a delight with a crunchy crust and moist crumb full of seedy goodness. Highly recommended. Specifically, take the no-added-yeast/cold retard overnight option. It truly does make an enormous difference in flavor - for the better.

The exuberant oven spring and bloom is characteristic of this bread.

I changed the hydration and because the starter had been refreshed two days prior, I used 60g rather than 50. The holes are just too darned big! It makes a decent sandwich loaf, but not quite what I was looking for. I searched some youtube videos and unlike Peter Reinhart, Ciril Hitz degasses his ciabattas and does not fold and his crumb structure is more even. I like the shape Peter's letter fold gives, but next bake of this loaf I will de-gas gently before folding to see if I can get a more uniform crumb structure.