Blog posts

I still have some rhubarb from a friend’s farm from last year frozen in my freezer.  We are hosting a dinner party for neighbours tonight so wanted to bake a pie with a pate brisée pastry crust using the rhubarb.  I couldn’t source any sour cherries so decided to try a spiced peach rhubarb filling for the first time.  I recently purchased a Fat Daddio’s pie dish.  I have always used glass pie dishes because I could see the crust and tell if it was fully baked.

I am definitely out of practice shaping baguettes.  Looking at my index I see it has been almost exactly 6 months, much too long.  Based on the three baguettes I baked you can see the improvement with the shaping from the first to the third.  Another variable is that I couldn’t find my preferred flour that I have been using for baguettes so had to use a flour I haven’t used for baguettes before.

 Very slightly gummy even though I baked it to 107F. The crust hasn't flown and it is absolutely delicious. Soakers were black sesame, flax, cracked rye and added toasted sunflower seeds.

Patsy

I recently bought some French Foricher T65 flour whilst shopping for some other flours.

I hadn't got a particular recipe in mind when I bought it, but then it became obvious that the first thing to try was an authentic "pain au levain".

I became rather interested in the original method for making pain au levain which dates from 1778 (or earlier) as detailed in Parmentier's "Le parfait boulanger, ou Traité complet sur la fabrication et le commerce du pain (Éd.1778)". The method is known as "travail sur trois levains", or work on three levains.

From Maurizio Leo's The Perfect Loaf. Baked this morning - will slice tomorrow to see if I've avoided the dreaded flying crust

We’re back home and as usual out of bread.  I found some Einkorn flour so decided to use it in this loaf.  No bread flour or VWG will be used for this loaf.  As I have recently started to use a stiffer tangzhong and have increased the percentage up to 20% I haven found that I don’t need to use any VWG at all and can still get a great rise for this style of bread.  So this loaf is 100% whole grain, 20% of that whole einkorn.  I also like the flavour that einkorn gives to bread, but it is definitely hard to come by around here.

I    've been interested in really dialing in on making a nice whole wheat loaf this year, hoping to get to a point where I can consistently make a loaf that has enough of an airy texture + richness of whole wheat to make white flour less relevant in my repertoire.  I've had some good starts that I documented here, but I recently had a really satisfying breakthrough loaf, that I think pretty well meets my criteria for success, so I'll give it a post of its own.

Derek and Gavin have been baking very interesting breads with (sweet) lupin flour lately. The promise and attraction of these breads is, to put it in Derek's words, "..taste delicious not too overpowering very light in mouth and stomach afterwards..." and "completely devoured in no time!".

Pullman Sandwich loaf with 16% lupin flour – 2nd test bake

Date Baked: 17th April 2023. 

Changes for this 2nd bake:

 1       Pre-cook 5% lupin flour.

 2.      Add 4% wheat gluten.

 3.      Increase hydration to 70%

 4.      Slight increase of IDY to 1.1%

Bread Evaluation Notes - Advice welcome.

Pullman Sandwich loaf with 16% lupin flour

Date Baked: 16th April 2023. 

Tangzong method adopted (5% bread flour)

Weight against Volume

I mixed 1000-gram dough @ 60% hydration. The dough was very tight, and I should have added extra water but didn’t. It became more pliable and softer during the bulk fermentation and shaping.