My Bread Journey

Hi all,

I think it was about time I shared some pictures of some of my disasters (which are increasingly getting better.)

12/02/2006: Whole Wheat. These breads are kinda sourdoughs... I starter only sat for 3 days, I do remember there were some bubbles, but I doubt it was a fully functional starter. Despite of that loaves rose a lot when proofed overnight and had a tremendous oven-spring! (At that time I didn't know what the terms proofing and oven-spring meant ;) The crust was a bit dry but the loaves were good and kept a long time if I remember right. You can see the "tunnel where the baker (that would be me) sleeps" as Peter Rinehart would say. Ha.....

 01/11/2007: Whole Wheat. My first NYT No-knead bread. Yeasted and whole wheat. Beautiful and crisp crust. No-holes in the crumb though :-(  Though I think that is the best looking bread I have ever made. I like baking in the covered lay pot which you can see in the background.

 01/14/2007: Whole wheat. Yeasted. with flax and sunflower seeds and rye flakes. I think the dough didn't develop enough gluten maybe because it wasn't wet enough, and oh, I tried doing Jim's slap and fold (French fold) on this one, which was not so good on this wet, crumbly textured, seeded dough. It wasn't so bad, No holes though. You can see I am complaining about No-Holes.... But I know whole wheat is infamous for that.

 01/19/2007: Whole Rye + Whole Wheat + a cup of white bread flour. Ok, I started making an all rye starter but with the ever increasing volume, and me hating to dump half of it every time, On the 3rd or 4th day of starter I threw everything (2-3 cups) really wet rye levain in the bowl with 3 cups of whole wheat and started kneading it... It was sooooooooo sticky, and I was afraid it wasn't going to rise, I mixed 1/2 tsp of yeast with white and kneaded that in. and baked the whole thing after a few hours.... Well it was so strongly rye.... It was quite good! No holes, of course.

 01/22/2007: All white ha ha Well, now I really wanted to make something from BBA. So here are some French baguettes and epi's. All white and yeasted....made with pate fermente overnight. And guess what, No holes again. It didn't taste like much either.... So I don't think I'd doing any white baking anymore.... except for cakes, cookied etc. I feel better on the real stuff.

01/26/2007: Sourdough Whole Wheat NYT No-knead I finally made a real starter from SourDoLady's Orange Juice starter and so I named him OJ. So here is the first creation from OJ. A no-knead whole wheat, sourdough bread baked in my favorite pot :) which I baked today. It was nice and sour and really moist and flavourful. I put in 2 cups of wet whole wheat starter with 2 cups whole wheat flour and a cup of water + flax seeds + freshly tamari roasted sunflower seeds, mixed it up and let it rise for 16 hours, folded it and benched it a couple more hours. It turned out really well, and even had traces of holes in it... Yoo Hoooo.

So that's all the pics I have so far... I'll keep posting them here and keep youall updated.

Thanks again to all Floyd, SourdoLady, Jim..... amd so many others

Srishti