Blog posts

I decided to try making a straightforward baguette, as a quick alternative to my overnight version. It turned out pretty nice. Enjoyed it with the first bottle of this year's elderflower sparkling wine. Will write about this on my blog too.

I have been craving this type of loaf since my last Swedish Rye bake about 4 months ago.  I miss the dense, seed and grain packed bread that, when sliced very thin, provides the perfect bed for open face sandwiches.

I used a Danish Rye formula to start from but made some additions and adjustments.  One being the use of whole wheat berries, boiled then roughly chopped.  Thanks goes to Dabrownman for his coaching on the scald.

The only downside to these breads is the 2-3 day wait for the crumb to set up and flavours to develop. 

2013 The Fresh Loaf Dabrownman’s Blog

1/4/2013 - Panettone - The Last Bake of 2012

1/4/2013 - New Year's Day Pizza and Banana Bread Cupcakes

1/5/2012 - Hanseata’s Sausage Filled Puff Pastry with Cheese

So I gave PiPs formula a go as I'm interested in upping my whole grain/rye chops.  I did miss the salt he has added to the levain so I came up a bit short on salt which is noticable but nonetheless very tasty.  In addition I opted at the last minute to increase the batch size and needed more seed to build the levain and made it up with white starter so its probably a 95% Rye opposed to 100%.  Along with those changes i used whole Rye opposed to medium Rye. 

I was looking at my stock of flours, and noticed some opened whole wheat bags, so I decided to use those and empty them out. 

So I made a recipe in baker's percentages, intending to add a small amount of sourdoughstarter.

35% Whole wheat flour
35% Whole spelt flour
30% Wheat flour
70% Water
2% Salt

calculated for an intended dough weight of 1 kg this gives;
205 grams of whole wheat flour, 205 grams of whole spelt flour, 175 grams of wheat flour, 410 grams of water and 12 grams of salt.

my friend travels quite a bit in her work. Presently she is in China, Kunshan. she lived in San Francisco before, and worked with a German company. That was how she pick up to love sourdough bread especially rye. she bought me Roggen Mehl1150 flour recently when she was in Taiwan. Yes, i sent her hunting for flour wherever her work require her to be!!

 this bake is for her.

For once, a recipe which isn't from Cresci! Though the baba dough is from another Italian pastry chef, Leonardo Di Carlo (a world champion pasticcere). He's got a massive new book out -Tradizione in Evoluzione: L'Arte e Scienza in Pasticceria - which is definitely on my "to buy" list when I think I can justify it.

I have just returned home from a weeks trip in the New England tablelands. This region is south across the border into New South Wales and roughly six hours drive from Brisbane. Even though it has some of New South Wales most renowned national parks and world heritage areas I was travelling for my usual reasons ... bread.

I haven’t been around TFL much for the last few months.    Work demands, some travelling, and a bum leg conspired to keep me from baking much.  And most of my baking has been ordinary…hardly blog-worthy.

I’ve missed you all, and thought I’d pop in with a report on some recent bakes.

I baked up more of Hamelman’s 5-Grain Levain, this time making one batch into 6 mini-batards.  They freeze nicely and one of these loaves is good for a couple days of hardy yumminess.