Blog posts

Or last 2 bakes of the year.  Took a 2 week hiatus from my bread reservation program and put the culture to sleep in the fridge for a week.  It is back out and coming back into it's own but it needs 3-4 days of regular refreshing before it's ready to build a levain.  Should have thought to freeze some bread for the break.  I didn't so I made French Bread based on the Tradition baguette formula incorporating 5% whole Rye for part of the flour.  I made 750g batard's proofed en couche.

We have a tradition to bring in the New Year with pizza.  How this got started I can’t remember but I do remember the lobster tails that used to be NY Eve fare.  This year’s crust was the best yet though and so was the sauce according to my daughter who keeps track of these things.

So, how'd I do on last year's list I posted?

1)  I will continue to share home-made bread.  Did that pretty well -- my end of year total for dough produced was over 324 kilograms (more than 714 lbs), with (my guess) more than 80% of that gifted.

2)  I will move more.  Haven't done enough of that.

3)  I will do more of what I want.  Still trying.

I love this basic formula that Karin came up with for these German style rolls.  I've made a Yeast Water version and a Sourdough version with great success.  I have been baking so much rye bread lately as a recipe tester for Stan's new book, yet to be released that I needed something lighter.  My Yeast Water starter is no more and my SD starter was not refreshed, so IY would have to do.

With my recent obsession to perfect my bread making skills and while still waiting for my sourdough starter to mature (it is 8 days old eexactly but it's still not passing the floating test although it has bubbles and smells vinegary I don't know what I am doing wrong there) I decided to experiment;I decided to do a tester loaf and see if I could come up with something edible .

This Boule is made with some poolish and some of the sourdough starter discard (I thought why keep wasting flour when I can use this in some way even if its to just flavour the dough and here's the result!

So, my shiny new brotforms (Thanks, Ian, for the lead to Lucky Clover Trading) were calling out, "Use us!" And I had been thinking to use some steel cut oats for something soft and hearty... and maybe adding a bonus of cranberries and walnuts. I started with Wooden Spoon's Steel Cut Oat Sourdough formula and made a few modifications that included increasing the WW to 25%, using AP at 25% (running low on BF) and, of course, adding fruit and toasted nuts.

My Sourdough Starter Routine: FAQ

December 30, 2014

I get questions about how I manage my sourdough starter frequently enough that I decided to put the information in a single blog entry to which I can refer in the future. What follows applies to a sourdough starter/levain containing mostly white wheat flour. Mostly rye and mostly whole wheat starters are different beasts.

My final loaf of 2014 is the overnight country blonde from Ken Forkish's FWSY. I did everything by the book except I increased the amount of rye from 5% to 10%. I bulk fermented for 15.5 hours (at 64F) and proofed the shaped dough for 3.5 hours (at 77F). I baked at 450F for 45 minutes using my Le Creuset marmitout (aka cast iron combo cooker) with the lid on for the first 25 minutes.

The bread was moist with just the right amount of sour. It turned out as perfect as I hoped it would. 

For my first real post, I'd like to share the results of this little experiment: I wanted to test the merits of the long cold fermentation vs. the long cold proof.

Sorry I haven't posted for some time as I have been busy with the holidays and visiting family (they are still here!)  I did bake a number of loaves of bread as gifts for friends, and that seemed to go over well.