Blog posts

Though I'm sure no one will be surprised to discover that this was my first attempt at shaping a batard, it is a truly delicious bread.

After reading Lin's post about gofio, I had to know how toasting part of the flour would turn out. (Spoilers: very good, highly recommend!) My first attempt at toasting oats for this did not work out in two ways: I didn't go far enough for any discernable effect, and I learned the hard way about protease activity in freshly milled flour...

The East Valley AZ Sourdough Institute is pleased to introduce day one of the inclusion bread concentration. Section one delves into inclusion breads from the Mediterranean, showcasing a wild yeast biga type rustic country bread. The ingredients for the day one exercise comprise: A.P. flour, Sprouted Red Fife, Dark Rye, Pecorino Romano, Rosemary, Lemon, and EVOO.

Blueberry Bundt cake.

Milled Stardust Hard White Wheat to create a yeast Poolish . 700g Poolish. 

The dough had 50g of very active SD levain . All the Semolina Rimacinata was in the dough . There was 100g  of the FMF Stardust in the dough as well. 

I got busy and the dough proofed longer than I wanted before I shaped and retarded. Fortunately it didn’t affect anything except the final height. Crumb and flavor are excellent. Very tender . My husband is crazy about this bread and says I can retire my Challah recipe from the 70’s …. not sure my heart will let me do that . 

Jēkabpils Rye is another delicious custard bread from Latvia. I found this recipe on Sergey Kirillov's ХЛЕБ & ХЛЕБ (Bread & Bread) blog; Sergey, in turn, sourced this recipe from "National hearth bread made from rye flour. RST LatvSSR 815-78" Official edition. State Planning Committee of the Latvian SSR, Riga, 1978. This bread is typical of many Baltic ryes that have multiple stages.

What the heck do you do with a surfeit of egg whites? Why do I have so many? Between ice cream, crème pâtissière, cream of mushroom soup, carbonara, etc., I seem to use many more yolks than whole eggs. It’s an ongoing struggle to keep from just dumping those whites into the disposal, so I store them, sometimes freeze them if we’re traveling, until the container in the corner of the refrigerator gets full.

Good morning from, the East valley AZ. Sourdough foundation. Also known as, my kitchen.
Today's exercise, high extraction of whole grain bread.
The players are:
High gluten bread flour 
Sprouted Whole wheat 
Sprouted Whole spelt
Dark Rye

An original formula By Will Falzon.
Italian Ciambella. Scaled for a 16 cup Bundt cake pan.
Once the cake is fully cooled, the simple powdered sugar topping will be added.

This a first wheat loaf I baked in a long time. I used Hamelman's recipe with a couple of changes: I substituted 10% of the AP flour with durum flour and 12.5% (or half) of the whole wheat with whole spelt. I used a bit more water as the flours seem to be more thirsty in wintertime. The loaf came out very nice with a great, crackly crust which stayed that way for a couple of days. I think it was thanks to the Ankarsrum mixer as I never got this kind of crust in my old Cuisinart stand mixer.

I have made several attempts to make simple white bread.  Every recipe I have tried the second rise just does not happen.  the dough makes it to almost the top of the bread pan.  I end up getting what amounts to half a loaf height wise.  Most recipes call for 720g of flour.  my bread pans are slightly larger than standard.  Mine are 5.25 X 9.25.  This last time I downloaded a bakers calculator that had a bread setting.  I tried this:  900g of flour, 648g water, 47.8g salt, 7.2g dry active yeast, and 1/4 cup of oil.