A stormy day - time for a baking day

It was absolutely bucketing down and as we had been warned of the approaching storm I decided to make yesterday a bake day.  Refreshed Yeast water and levain on Saturday and made initial builds of levain and left overnight.  It is winter and so things are moving a bit slowly.

First off the rank was a repeat of Abe’s Swiss Farmhouse bread.  I followed the recipe here

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/56266/swiss-farmhouse-bread-using-raspberry-yw

pretty much so won’t repeat the whole method.  The changes I made were to use a mix of pecan and brazil nuts as I didn’t have enough pecan nuts and the bazil nuts needed to be eaten.

 The other change was instead of mixing gently by hand, I actually did 150 slap and folds to incorporate everything except nuts and raisins.  Once I felt I had enough gluten development I patted the dough out and spread nuts and raisins over it and continued with gentle stretch and folds until they were mixed in thoroughly.  Only one stretch and fold after about an hour.  Baked the loaves late afternoon.  Dough was easy to work with, shaped well and I think baked up beautifully. Here is the Crumb shot

Just before lunch I mixed up the flours and water for a 2nd try of Ru’s Toasted Oat sourdough.  I wanted to see if I needed as much water as last time.  I added all of the water as I went and the dough just sucked it up.  I ended up adding another 30 gms so hydration was actually more like 100%!!    My method was the same as here

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/56356/rus-toasted-oat-sourdough

I shaped the easy to manage dough, put it in the banneton seam side down (first time ever!) and gave it a bench rest of 1 hour before retarding overnight.  This morning I baked as usual.  The seam opened up and seems to have created a bit of a hole in the centre, probably poor shaping on my part.  I think I prefer the way a score opens on a batard so don’t think I will do this again.

 Crumb shot

Lastly I made Teresa Greenway’s Potato water Blister Crust sourdough BUT I found a little kamut in the fridge left over from another bake.  I substituted this small amount for 1.55% bread flour.  The dough certainly felt different – a bit more grainy, but by the time I had finished bulk ferment all the liquid was absorbed and dough was quite poofy.  I made 3 x 550 g loaves, retarded overnight and baked this morning.  I wanted to try different scoring patterns so each was scored differently.  They baked up really well and I was happy with oven spring.

The crumb is not at all what I expected.  But it is slightly yellow from the very small amount of kamut, the texture is fine and soft and although I haven’t tried it yet, a friend to whom I gave one loaf said it was delicious!

this one inspired by isand66"s lovely scoring patterns!

The crumb is not at all what I expected.  But it is slightly yellow from the very small amount of kamut, the texture is fine and soft and although I haven’t tried it yet, a friend to whom I gave one loaf said it was delicious!

So a busy day, a really good bake and we had thunder, lightening, rain (142 mm in 24 hours) but although we are expecting more rain tonight, it has been quieter! Thank heavens.  

Leslie