tpassin's blog

In the last few months we have had several threads on rice flour gluten free loaves.  Some seemed more successful than others, and some seemed to be a little quirky as to how well they would bake up without collapsing.  There was also a GF thread the other day, which produced a loaf that looked like bread but used psyllium and xantham gum.  I don't need to eat gluten-free but I got curious. I didn't want to include either psyllium nor typical gums that are often used for GF products so I needed some other approach.

I'm enjoying trying corn (maize)-rye blends in a variety of breads.  Today I baked a pair of sourdough boules where 40% of the flour is an equal blend of corn and rye. The baked loaves came out attractive and wonderfully good eating

Pix first, then details.

These parathas are my first entry to the new flatbread Community Bake.  The flour combination is a little unusual but I thought it should taste good and it does.

Gearing up for the flatbread CB, I want to share this post on parathas because it has a good discussion on what you want from your flours for parathas, rotis, and so on:

https://www.seriouseats.com/aloo-paratha

This a test post to try the new image machinery, and to try editing the post.  Here's a crumb shot:

This was one of my efforts at making a Altamura-style loaf. Not bad, not great.

After saving the post, I used the "Edit" link to add this sentence.  So far, everything has gone smoothly.

[Added later] Here is my original post about this bake:

During the Infinity Bread Community Bake, I created an Infinity Soda Bread. See it at 

https://weightloss-slim.fit/comment/529736#comment-529736%3C/a%3E%3C/p%3E%3Cp%3EToday's bake is nearly the same recipe except I leavened it with sourdough starter instead of baking soda.

Here's a list of all the bakes sent in for the Infinity Bread Community bake. Hope I didn't miss any!

[September 10 - added three template test bakes]

I want to pose a number of questions that I hope will stir up some discussion.  I have ideas about some of them but no real facts.  Here's the first.

I have measured the volume of a starter as it rose after feeding.  I've done this several times with various starters and a poolish. The general pattern was the same.  The starter would, after a delay, start rising and build up to a roughly constant rate, then start to taper off.

I was looking through the Community Bake on ciabatta, and I didn't see that anyone had tried using the original recipe of the inventor, Arnaldo Cavallari.  It's available on line as a photo of the recipe (in Italian) in his bakery, and there is a faithful translation available, too (I know because I transcribed the recipe from the photo by hand, and translated it with Google Translate). I'll post the links later.  The recipe is very different from what us home bakers typically do, and also from most ciabatta recipes I have seen.

After some discussion in recent threads, I decided that it's high time I tried out shorter bulk ferments. My guiding principle has been that the longer the flour is hydrated, and the longer it's fermented, the better the flavor. So I usually let bulk ferment go on to more than double, sometimes triple, the original size.  This usually gives me a fine, fairly uniform crumb, which may have large pores or smaller ones depending on hydration, grains, all these sorts of things.