Blog posts

Well this old skibum is a very happy baker, having both a natural levain and now a working yeast water culture. I used 50g of sweet levain and 50g of YW levain, both at 100% hydration in a mix with about 450g total flour.

I am AMAZED by the oven spring the YW adds to the bake. I bake pulla often, but have been stuck baking the commercial yeasted versions. The natural leavening simply produces superior crust, crumb and flavour!

With all of this fresh starter, I am back to baking something every day and my neighbours and I are loving the results!

I am happy to be back to baking!!  having spent 2 weeks in front of my computer overhauling my website it feels great to get back to what I like the best, baking!  

I just returned home from my second bake in a wood fired oven. My first bake, about 3 weeks ago, is described in My first WFO bake: Lessons in time, temperature and humility. That experience demonstrated the wisdom of the advice I had received, especially the advice I disregarded.  

I haven't made a post in awhile, but I have been practicing, practicing, practicing. I hit one year of baking last weekend, and six months since I fell in love with sourdough. I actually haven't baked with commercial yeast since I baked that first fateful SD loaf on November 4, 2014. 

Over these last weeks, I've been experimenting with a range of ways to bake sourdough in the midst of a busy work week. This is the quest of a home baker who can't seem to limit herself to weekend baking, despite a pretty demanding full-time job. 

This is the first time I bake any Ken Forkish’s bread. This is the first time I post on the Fresh Loaf blog, although I’ve read and learnt so much from a lot of the active participants here. Rightly or wrongly, I feel I can’t be a complete bread baker, among other things, if I’ve never tried Forkish’s recipes. I started baking a lot of Chad Robertson’s breads after I read his two books, Tartine Bread and Tartine Book No.3, a year ago.

“My recent straying from baguettes to batards is a mere bagatelle, a minor distraction”, Alfanso said when recently quoted in the World Baking Journal**.

Here is the second loaf from this weekend.  Same formula as the first, only I ran out of time so it had to go into the fridge overnight.  Baked it this morning.  I do not think that I was as aggressive enough at deflating the dough with final shaping - the holes are irregular, some are quite large, and it looks like one of the slashes wanted to blow out.  I am thinking when I get to cutting the loaf through the big slash that there is going to be a large, empty hole.  Still have my shaping training wheels on:-)

A crazy and demanding week over, a bit of a sleep in, and an entire weekend to slow down and relax. Whew! It all starts up again next week, but for now, it's out of my mind. And we were out of 'just good bread', without fruits, nuts, etc.

Wow is it ever grat to have a strong active sweet levain again! I have been feeding daily to help develop character and depth and also baking daily. I built a 1:1:1 levain with bread flour and 95F water as per Forkish and it doubled in three hours. for this bake, I used my sweet levain pulla dough and the chololate filling from ITJB and slivered almonds. YUMMM!!!

I gifted some of this and this morning's boule to my neighbours as a Mother's day treat. I have some happy neighbours!

Tried my hands on the 1:2:3 SD last night but it was a flop. It was probably because of a rookie like me who can't handle any high hydration dough yet. It will remain elusive for the moment. (Sorry if I disappointed you, Abe)