ejm's blog

Dark rye bread flavoured with onion and caraway seeds and made with wild yeast; based on a recipe by "Breadchick", one of the Bread Baking Babes (BBB)

My starter is extremely active these days. I think that's one reason this bread turned out so incredibly well. When I started to make it, I was sort of sneaking around about it. It was a bit warm outside (around 28C) and I wasn't absolutely certain that turning on the oven would be a big hit.

My fears were unfounded. We loved this bread. And no wonder. It was fabulous!

It was equally delicious on its own, or buttered, or toasted and buttered. And it made the most stellar Reuben sandwiches (made with home-made red cabbage sauerkraut)! Did we take photos of the sandwiches? Ha. Of course not. We were too busy stuffing them down our gullets.

I was particularly thrilled with the slashes on the bread. I've never managed to have slashes stay so well defined. I only hope I can reproduce this! I can't wait until we have enough freezer space so I can make it again.

For a more detailed account, please see:

• blog from our kitchen: wild onion rye bread


• recipe for wild onion rye bread (based on Mary's (aka Breadchick) Dark Onion Rye)

The all-purpose flour I use is "No Name" (Loblaws) unbleached (about 11.5% protein). The rye flour is "Five Roses" Dark Rye flour (no idea how much protein). The bread flour is "Robin Hood" 'best for bread' flour (about 13% protein).

And I used my shiny new digital scale to weigh the ingredients!

Instead of toasting English muffins, we toasted our multigrain bread, made with seeds, corn, rolled oats, oat groats, oat bran, buckwheat, rye and wheat flours to make Eggs Fauxrentine (ouuchh! sorry about that!)

On the day that we decided to have this extravaganza of eggs with Hollandaise, I was hoping to make Eggs Florentine. But we didn't have any spinach, so I decided to try using radish greens instead.

WHAT a brilliant idea!

So was the multigrain bread toasted for the base. And the bacon. And the chopped chives from the garden. And the radishes on the side.

You've got to try this combination and make "Eggs Fauxrentine"! (Hard boiled eggs* with bacon, radish greens and hollandaise garnished with fresh chives and radish roots).

* Instead of hard-boiling the eggs, you can gently poach them so the yolks are still soft. (Brrrr. Personally, I can't think of a more disgusting way to start the day, but there it is.)

Did I mention how great this is? The multigrain bread was particularly good as the base. Its nutty flavour is the perfect complement to the Hollandaise - especially this particular Hollandaise that had a little more lemon than some.

Yes, you really must try this!

Just a word of caution, make sure that the radish greens are young and tender rather than large and furry. A couple of days ago, I added some radish greens from a more mature bunch of radishes to a sandwich and it was just a little too much like having a bit of wool in the sandwich....

Please read more about radish greens:

• Eggs Fauxrentine (WHB#142: radish greens)

Oh yes, and here are our recipes for:

• Hollandaise sauce


• multigrain bread


• Eggs Fauxrentine

This is a "YeastSpotting" post. For details on how to be included in Susan's (Wild Yeast) weekly YeastSpotting round up, please read the following:

• wildyeastblog.com: YeastSpotting Archive

edit: added apology for the rather horrible name for this truly delicious dish...

I was wandering around in here the other day and saw what looked to be great looking raisin bread on Floydm's pages. The recipe was originally from Hamelman's book "Jeffery Hamelman's Bread". (I just tried to read Hamelman's tome, Bread: A Baker's Book of Techniques and Recipes and returned it to the library after aborting about ten pages in. With what's left of my mind, I just couldn't quite manage to retain enough to comprehend anything he was saying.) But happily, Floydm could retain and comprehend what he read, enabling him to translate this fabulous recipe.

Thank you Floyd! The bread is absolutely delicious!

Here is what I did to Floyd's version of the recipe:

• cinnamon raisin oatmeal bread

I did it!!! I did it!!!

After weeks of angst with babying my jar of wild yeast, feeling I would never be able to bake a loaf of bread that WASN'T sour (not to mention the several times I was going to throw in the towel altogether), I have achieved my goal.

Not only was it not too sour; it wasn't sour at all! And it was light!! Light as a feather!!

And here's how I did it: I virtually started over with feeding. Some time in March or so, I brought the sludge out of the fridge and returning to McKenna Grant's (Piano Piano Pieno) original formula, and started a twice a day regimen:

• 2 Tbsp wild sludge
• 3 Tbsp unbleached all-purpose flour
• 2 Tbsp water

And kept at it for days until finally finally, it began to look like a real starter again.

Now the question is whether I'll be able to repeat the success...

I like to balance cookie cutter(s) on top of the just shaped bread to etch a design in top of the loaf. For this loaf, I used 3 heart shaped cutters. Instead of removing them just before baking, I left them there for the first half of the baking and removed them when turning them around to account for uneven heat in the oven.

The bread really was outstanding. Wonderfully crisp and chewy on the outside and light and open-holed inside.

• Wild yeast buildup and feeding schedule
• Wild Bread recipe

I made the following for Bread Baking Day (BBD) #09: Bread With Oats

In the past couple of weeks we were having problems with fuses blowing on our oven; it's fixed now and ever since the oven has been working beautifully. BUT. I think the oven is now hotter than it was. I know that I used to be able to be quite casual about checking the bread after the bell rang 30 minutes after putting it in the oven. I used to take it out at 35 minutes and it would still not be quite ready. Or perhaps it's the honey content in the dough that makes the crust get so dark. Perhaps I should bake this bread at 375F instead of 400F. As a result, this bread does look awfully dark. But inside, it is as wonderful as ever.

• recipe for multigrain bread made with seeds, cornmeal, oatmeal, buckwheat, rye and wheat flours

I made the following for Bread Baking Day (BBD) #08: Celebrate!

Because there was enough dough for two loaves, I decided to make one as a roll and braid the other one without filling it.

We really love this bread. And we really loved how much oven spring there was. Imagine how tall it would have been if I'd put the bread in tins to bake!

Next time I will use prunes for the filling, as Manuela suggests, rather than apricots. Apricots are nice but I think the flavour of the prunes will be better with the bread, not to mention, prettier in the roll. And I'll add less filling, and serve the extra in a little bowl on the side. I like the idea of the roll having just a hint of the fruit flavour.

We haven't tasted the braid yet but we know that it will be delicious as well. I may have to make some apricot or prune jam to go with it though.

• recipe for apricot roll

Please note that I have not forgotten that today is 1 April. But I decided to refrain from playing tricks on the blog this year. I thought my time would be better spent posting for BBD#08 (let alone that I couldn't think of anything...).

A few mornings ago, I imagined that my wild yeast starter was all ready to make bread. I announced I would make focaccia with it to go with that evening's dinner of puy lentils and sausage. Silly me. I should have known this would be a mistake. My failures with my wild yeast are legion this winter. The focaccia dough failed entirely to rise. Not even a glimmer of a bubble. After several hours. So I stuck the slumping lump of dough in the fridge and made another announcement: I would make chapatis with wild yeast (ha) dough the next day, because they're made without yeast anyway. What a brilliant save!! The chapatis tasted faintly sour but they were absolutely wonderful. Especially when you consider that the dough might have been baked into a spectacularly terrible focaccia.

• recipes for flatbread, including chapatis and focaccia
• Moringa Leaf Omelette and Chapatis

At some point not long after turning the oven on to preheat our bread stone, a fuse blew. We didn't notice until after putting the first two naan in the oven. Luckily for us though, we remembered that we had once made pita on the stovetop. So we quickly grabbed the tava (shallow pan in photo) and started heating it on the big burner.

And disaster was averted. By adding only an extra ten minutes of cooking time, we were able to tuck in to our fabulous Indian style dinner. Yes, indeed, rogan josh with beets & turnips, broccoli and naan is delicious!

Here is our recipe for naan with instructions for baking in the oven. Look at the pita recipe for instructions on how to bake on the stovetop. (Also included in the list are our recipes for beets and rogan josh):

• Beets and Turnip with Fennel and Mustard Seeds


• Rogan Josh


• flatbreads: including naan

I saw SourdoLady's most beautiful looking Sourdough Cinnamon Swirl Bread and decided I had to make it. Luckily, even though mine was a miserable failure at a cinnamon swirl, it still tastes good.

• recipe for cinnamon swirl(ish) bread

It has been driving me crazy to just throw away the leftovers after feeding our wild yeast starter. Especially as it seems to be in perfectly good condition. I know it's just a couple of tablespoons of flour but still it just seems wrong even to compost it. So now, every time I feed the starter, I have been adding whatever is left over to biscuits or muffins or even bread that is made with commercial yeast.

At first, I was just going to make cheese baking powder biscuits. But then I suddenly thought that cheese pinwheels would be fun. I already knew that adding the left over sludge wouldn't disturb the biscuit dough at all. That's one of the great things about baking powder biscuits. They're so forgiving. Well, pretty forgiving, anyway...

There are some hazards to not measuring... perhaps I added a tiny bit too much cheese. See how it exploded out of the pinwheels in the baking.

Because there was plenty of cheese, these biscuits didn't need any butter, although a little butter was good too. Wheee! So much for adding olive oil instead of lard or shortening to the dough to make the biscuits better for us....

Here is what I did to make the pinwheels:

• cheese pinwheels recipe