ll433's blog

The biga fun continues. This time, I decided to pre-ferment everything. 50% whole rye in a SD crumble biga (45% hydration), and 50% bread flour in a IDY poolish.

The next day, I simply combined the poolish and the biga and added salt. Given that this was a 100% preferment, the bulk was really short - 2 hours - and I concentrated on building a lot of strength upfront. Shaped, added the usual suspects, and baked in the dutch oven at 220 degrees with the lid off halfway.

We're in Tenerife for a hiking vacation, and I chanced upon this bag of roasted corn and wheat flour in the supermarket. 

There are also versions with only corn, or a combination of corn and other grains, but I bought the 50/50 corn/white.

This is a 45% wholegrain (rye, khorasan, einkorn) loaf, around 72% hydration, with 90% of the flour prefermented in a two-stage biga over 20 hours.

The first stage consisted of 220g of the wholegrain flours mixed loosely with 100g of water and 10g of 70% hydration starter. The result is a crumbly mix, something that resemble apple crumble mix. I left this to ferment for 10 hours.

I then added in 220g of white bread flour and a further 100g of water to the biga, again cutting into the biga as if I'm cutting into shortcrust dough. I left this to ferment for another 10 hours.

Dosa is an Indian flatbread made from just fermented rice and lentils, water and salt. It's exceptionally crunchy, slightly tangy, and utterly delicious. It's usually eaten with a chutney, raita, or some spicy potatoes. 

I made mine with raw short grain white rice and raw black lentils (it's usually made with black gram, which is not that readily available in the shops here). I soaked rice to lentils using a 3:1 ratio overnight. The next day, I blended the rice and lentils with as little water as possible to make a thick pancake-like batter. 

I ran out of all forms of wheat flour - which is what I typically add to whatever preferment - so had to come up with something for the rye biga I had already made yesterday night. I ended up adding more rye and buckwheat, making this a 80% medium rye, 20% buckwheat loaf, with 60% of the rye pre-fermented in the biga.

It's been a sad few weeks of my starter being underused. Now with work winding down and the parties beginning, it's time for some serious baking again.

Just made this basic biga bread for lunch. 60% of the flour is pre-fermented with an overnight biga, and the next day the other 40% is added with water and salt. Overall hydration is about 70%. Takes 4 hours from mixing to taking it out of the oven.

Had a good friend coming over for a run and lunch today, but I was lazy and woke up too late! I don't usually like to make any yeasted product in less than three hours, but today was such a day and I was determined to make the best of it. 

Two functional bakes to fit into the routine and needs of the family.

In Singapore roti prata is sold at just about every food centre, very cheaply available at about $1 a piece. I've loved these ever since I was a kid and it's something I have missed a lot since moving away.

Conceptually they are easy to make. White flour is mixed with salt and water, rested, then stretched somewhat acrobatically, oiled with ghee, folded into an envelope (or twisted and spiralled) and fried on a hot pan with more ghee.

I've done levain in stages to build flavour and gone up to 70% PFF in a previous rye loaf, so I thought why not try out a two-stage biga, go up to 80% PFF, and skip bulk fermentation since there should already be so much flavour?

This ended up being a 40% teff-rye loaf at 70% hydration.