Blog posts

Quick post showing this mornings croissants freshly baked.

My SD starter lievito madre responsible for raising these delights.

egg washed

As a number of you know, I have experimented with freezing dough and baking it later.  I have had some recent mixed results, and I thought I would share it to see if there are some things to learn from my experience. Recently, I made a wonderful Tartine sourdough with olives, herbes de provence and lemon zest, recipe link below.  I froze the second loaf to bake later, and I baked it in the last few days.  It was terrible--a flat, gummy disk.

This week Lucy came up with a combination method; part no knead, part slap and fold and part stretch and fold to go along with her recent sprouted flour fetish..  the whole grain sprouts this week were; spelt,  rye, barley and wheat and made up the 34%  whole grains in the mix.

I just wanted to share my first starter and see if anyone can provide me with hints and tips.

I first started it 2 weeks ago with white flour at 100% hydration and some white wine vinegar. It started making shy bubbles after day 2 but not until I fed it whole wheat flour on the 5th day did it rise and over flooded its container.

I kept adding whole wheat till now except one addition of rye which did not react and 24 hours passed with no bubbles visible. 

Now I am planning on using this starter at night for my preferment and will keep photos and posts updated

It’s time to be honest; so I’ll lay it all out right here. I’m into my third year of my 5-year plan to learn how to bake good bread, and somewhere around March this year, I lost my baking mojo! Every loaf that came out of the oven fell into two categories: brick or curling stone!

"I say, my friends," pursues Mr. Chadband, utterly rejecting and obliterating Mr. Snagsby's suggestion, "why can we not fly? Is it because we are calculated to walk? It is. Could we walk, my friends, without strength? We could not. What should we do without strength, my friends? Our legs would refuse to bear us, our knees would double up, our ankles would turn over, and we should come to the ground. Then from whence, my friends, in a human point of view, do we derive the strength that is necessary to our limbs?

Who knew she wouldn’t be home for dinner when Lucy went al out on her favorite pizza dough. Yes it is our Focaccia Romana white dough made with an overnight poolish that I nearly half the dough.  But it also has garlic, sun dried tomato, olive oil and rosemary in the dough too – yum!.  No sourdough, no whole grains just plain old white bread made with a pinch of commercial yeast.

Because I accidentally melted my 12 Quart Cambro container and wound up baking only a single loaf for my Country Brown, I decided to make a "quick" loaf using the 50% Whole Wheat Biga formula.  I ground the flour the night before, made the AP biga the night before, and mixed the dough in the morning.

I used I bulk fermented the dough in the 6-Quart container and, quite frankly, while it was a little small, I did not really miss using the 12 quart container.  I wonder if I really need such a big container for making only two loaves of bread.

I decided to bake an Overnight Country Brown bread, out of Ken Forkish's Flour Water Salt & Yeast book.

During the bulk fermentation, I placed my 12-quart Cambro container in the stove, door slightly ajar and light on.

Note to self and others: When using the oven as a proofing box, put a sticky note on whatever button or dial is needed to turn the stove on, that says "Remove contents before using!".

Our friends, Tim and Barb, are visiting us in California from the Midwest, and I asked them what kind of bread they wanted me to make.  Tim asked for sourdough with olive oil and rosemary.  As rosemary is plentiful (and drought-resistant), we have lots of it growing everywhere in our backyard, so this was not a difficult request.

I modified one of my sourdough recipes to make the bread, adding olive oil and rosemary (recipe below).

Ready for the overnight proof.