i make bread

Part of Friday's bake

I have an order for 180 rolls to be served as part of a starter at a fne dining event.

Fine. Dining. No pressure then.

I'm then told that Heston Blumethal will be a guest at this function.

My bread rolls are going to be the best he ever tasted!

Walnut sourdough

Sourdough baked 27 October 2012

Panettone | 1st attempt 15-17 October 2012

A totally acceptable result for a first attempt, with a lovely flavour, but I'm going to push this one further and modify the recipe. It's a hassle to make, and I figure if it takes so long to make 3 days, I may as well aim for a result that hits all the buttons All I'm looking for is a texture that shreds when it's opened up - this one is definately dough like, but not the shreddy dough I'm after...

bread sticks

Sourdough and long fermented light rye and spelt

more experiments in sourdough...

Logically, there has to be an end to how many changes to a sourdough recipe there can be. In reality, it seems endless.

Here we have the same recipe followed to the letter, but altering the amount of water in each loaf. I wont go into all the specifics, but the total water content was 108% hydration for the loaf on the left, 75% for the middle loaf and 70% for the one on the right.

They all tasted pretty similar and the crumb was really good - even on the one that came out more like a cow pat than I'd have liked. Definately more rubbery crumb in the wetter dough.

75% hydration seems to have bahaved best, easire out of the banneton, easier to slash. So, now it's time to reduce the water content and see how my little sourdough culture behaves and what affect it has on the flavour.

Rye sourdough experiments...

If you're in the UK, you'll know that Summer arrived in May and departed two weeks later and we've been diving in the flood waters to find it since...

The upshot of that is that my sourdough has been all over the place, one minute 24°C the next 18°C. It proper screws up any timings you might have thought you had sussed (yes, I am from the North of England).

This week, I wanted to try and get to grips with it again, so off with the timing experiements. Four doughs, same ingredients, different water temperatures and ambient room temperatures for the bulk fermentations - and a notebook and temperature probe.

This was dough number three of four, which I felt was one of the best. Tasted super good...