Winter Grab Bag of Bakes
Hi Freshloafers. It’s been a while since my last post, despite best intentions, and I decided that rather than put it off further, I thought I’d submit a bit of a “catch up” post that has a grab bag of quasi-recent bread experiments. Forgive the lack of commentary or detail on process – happy to answer any questions, of course – but life & work have kept me busier than usual, so I haven’t had as much time for weekend baking or chronicling as I would like.
Nonetheless, I am still having fun with a now clear “porridge bread” phase – oatmeal porridge bread from Tartine #3 has been the house favorite for going on 8 months – as well as experimenting with other grains, seeds, oats etc to add further dimension to loaves. Like many others have mentioned on this site, the more I bake, the more I “non-white flour” breads I find myself enjoying (the only real exception here is pizza, which, with my baking steel, is a Sunday night favorite). One territory I haven’t really experimented with yet is rye, so I think that may be the next place I dabble -- building a rye mother starter, and subbing a % of rye flour into standard favorites, etc – I’d love any rye-centric suggestions or recommendations!
Ken Forkish-inspired levain breads (country brown, pain de campagne...)
Sunday night pizzas (neo-neopolitan, and no-knead versions)
Baking for the Holidays (lion house rolls, Mom's sticky buns, oatmeal buttermilk sandwich bread)
Porridge Breads
And a flop (tried to get away with one starter refresh, not so much...)
Cheers from Seattle,
D
Comments
Some lucky family members have been eating high on the hog with the baker!. Don't forget the sprouted grains...Well done and happy baking from warm AZ.
Sprouted grains sounds fun, any go-to formulas that you'd recommend? Just browsed your blog, so many fantastic examples there!
sprouted multi--grain, 25% whole grain flour from the same multi-grains, 25% AP flour and 25% bread flour at about 78-80% hydration and a bit less than 2% salt with a long cold retard for ferment or proof. It may not be a Bread Revolution like PR claims but he is on to something about sprouted grain making for fine tasting and special bread. I'm hooked for sure:-) Lucy has come up with so many sprouted grain breads since 2012 and they are were all a delight to make and eat,
Can you tell us more about the one starter refresh?
FF
sure...I was trying to make a batch of bread by building the levain directly from my refrigerated starter (vs more typical routine of refreshing my starter from the fridge one or twice before building the levain). I pushed the temperature pretty high as the started matured to try and overcome this and thought I might be able to get away with it based on how things looked, but as you can see from the pancakes I made, the dough ultimately did not have enough strength :)
I'm trying to understand the benefit of multiple feedings before using a starter.
FF
Yes, that is one of the ongoing tricks with levain breads I find. It's largely dependent on how you keep your starter, how often you use it, what time of flour it is made of, etc. I like to keep my white flour starter in the fridge for most of the time as I'm largely a weekend baker, and don't want to worry about trying to feed it daily or even weekly. This means for a weekend I want to bake, I usually will take it out Thursday night to feed it one time, and then a second time on Friday AM so it's ready to build a levain for a particular recipe Friday evening. Life often gets in the way of this schedule, though, so will often have to improvise!
Everything, the breads, the pizzas, the sweet baking, the photography, and your little dogs (true, we haven't seen them in a long while :)! Thanks for sharing.
:)
I wish I could make pizza that beautiful! Please continue documenting your porridge bread experiments as well.
and will do!
Wow, these loaves are just amazing. The pizzas look good too. This post will likely push my arse in gear to get baking some country style levain loaves again. With all the nice weather we are having on the pacific northwest, it won't be long till I get my quarry tiles on the backyard grill again.
Thanks for the post!
John
it is seriously beautiful here right now, grilled last weekend both nights!
I've been grilling since December, regardless of weather (even grilled on the few days we got snow). This was the first year that I realized I don't mind grilling in the cold, if it means I don't put the grill away for 6 months. Of course, it's much nicer when you can grill in this mild weather.
Happy baking and grilling.
John