Blog posts

Four nights in Bangkok, Thailand. 

Accompanied by my business partner, our quest was to find a bulk flour supplier for my sourdough bakery in Siem Reap, Cambodia, called "Bäckerei". Other high priority items included paper bread bags, food-grade lye (sodium hydroxide) for pretzels, and brotformen (dough proofing baskets). 

Of course, I was also on the lookout for bread. Good bread, I mean.

I've been baking for the Arts and crafts market,scheduled next Friday the 14th of March,  and here are 2 bakes out of 3. I plan to bake Tartine's sesame bread last. When i have spare spare time, and effort, i plan to bake Mark Sinclair's Potato rolls that Mr. Mark has so generously shared with us. 

80% Rye with Rye flour soaker from Hamelman's book: BREAD

Whole Wheat Multigrain from Hamelman's book: BREAD

I was pleased with the results.  The beer came through big time.  The crumb was moist and chewy.

1 1/2 cup Whole wheat flour KA

1 1/2 cup bread flour

3/4 cup buttermilk

1 1/2 Guinness beer

1/4 t yeast

1 1/2 t sea salt

-18 hr ferment

-baked in dutch oven at 500 degrees, 20 min lid on, 18 lid off.

My starter seed culture is not ready yet so I'm practicing bread with commercial yeast in the meantime. I read in another TFL post that it's possible to make "artisan" bread using commercial yeast and was pointed to this link for Forkish's white bread with overnight poolish from FWSY.

I have been baking nothing but the basic country loaf now for several months, and my breads have always come out pretty good, though varying considerably in flavor.

I am a weekend baker and have wanted to get my bakes done early Saturday instead of late Saturday night or early Sunday.  So I decided to take another stab at doing things backwards.

Friday morning, I took my starter out of the fridge (last fed, a week earlier), and created the leaven.

Extra Fiber and whole grain with this bagel. It taste fantastic. As soon as they came out of the oven, they are all gone!! I gotta make another batch this week :P

soda Bath

Crumb Shot

I made the sour rye today following David's post and spraying the loaves with water instead of the corn starch glaze as suggested by arlo and PMcCool. I sprayed the loaves well with water just before putting them into the oven and again after 15 min. and again after 10 min. and again after the temperature of the loaf was 205 degrees. I turned off the oven and let the loaves sit for 5 min. with the oven door ajar. 

The crust is very firm, there is a nice shine and I'm pleased. 

This weeks bake is 16% Organic Sprouted Spelt Sourdough….

Slash and Bake Before...

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Slash and Bake After...

I have been reading a bit about the various ways in which home bakers use a cast iron combo cooker to produce some spectacular loaves, and was struck by the posts by people who skip the "pre heat" step (either for safety or fuel efficiency purposes), and seem to see no issue in the final bake.  Given it would seem much easier to work with a room temperature combo cooker vs a 500 degree version, I wanted to do a side by side comparison to see if there was much of a difference in the finished product.