Tag Archives: Sourdough

January 8th, 2011

Sourdough bread with roasted oat

Category Bread, hand kneaded Tags: oats, Sourdough 24 Responses

I fell in love with the sourdough bread with roasted oats when I saw it at Martins blog. And then Petra bake the bread for World Bread Day. And I knew I had to bake it, too. Ulrike and Ursula where fast then me baked it directly. For me it take much more time. First I had to spent to much time in lab (I had busy times last year) and then I had to start a new starter.

But during Christmas and new years eve I had some off and I spent on of them for bread baking day. I baked Pandoro, Ciabatta, a new year pretzel and the sourdough bread with roasted oat. And to use the oven as good as possible I doubled the recipe.

The gentle kneading methode Martin use is for perfect when both bowls of the kitchen machine are already blocked with dough. Martin mix the dough shortly with a wooden spoon and then fold the dough every 30 min for three times. After the third folding the gluten was very finely developed. And feeling the soft structure of the dough is better then every kind of meditation for me.

And the resulting bread is great. Airy crumb, crisp crust and the delicious flavour of roasted oatmeal. That is a bread for the “bake it again” list. Continue reading →

December 4th, 2010

Starting a Sourdough Starter

Category Starter and Preferments Tags: Sourdough 113 Responses

It has been month since I bake with sourdough the last time. I was always very busy and neglected my sourdough completely. The little glass in which I store the sourdough vanished somewhere in the depth of the fridge. Now, as the time gets more quite, I planned to bake with sourdough again. But when I opend the glas the dough looked not good and its smell was strange. I tried to reactivate the dough but it was beyond hope. I think I starved it to death.

Lucky for me that I never had a close relationship to a batch of sourdough. I’m not the kind of girl who gives its sourdough a name and a personality, for me it is just a mixture of different bacteria and yeasts. So my dead sourdough did not left me heartbroken at all but a little bit exited because now I had the change to do what I really love: Starting a Starter. It is really the most enthralling part of baking with sourdough. Seeing how the first bubbles are formed and the dough starts to rise, to realize how the smell change that’s the right thing for a biologist.

I love projects in my kitchen which bubble and ferment. And I always planned to post about starting a Sourdough starter. And so we start: Please take out your flour, we start a starter today. Continue reading →

June 16th, 2010

Rustic Whole Wheat Bread

Category Bread Tags: Pâte fermentée, Sourdough, whole grain 23 Responses

At the moment I am completely in love with bread with mixed preferments. And because I long for a simple whole wheat bread I decided to bake a bread with a whole wheat sourdough and with Pâte fermentée which I prepared with white flour.

I placed the dough seam side down in the breadform so when I placed the loaf in the oven the seam side was up, so the bread crust cracked open in an irregular pattern. That looks pretty and I don’t have to slash.

I send this recipe to Susans weekly Yeastspotting.

Continue reading →

June 3rd, 2010

Seeded Bread with two preferments

Category Bread Tags: oats, Pâte fermentée, Seeds, Sourdough, Spelt 7 Responses

I did not planed to post this recipe (I posted some similar recipes already) but the boyfriend praised this bread so much that I decided to write it down in case he asked me to bake it again.

For this bread I had to smuggle sunflower seeds in the house and to my surprise he did not find it in the pantry. But as soon as I opened the package he appeared in the kitchen and started to nibble the seeds. But at this time I had the amount I needed already weighed.

I used two preferments for this bread: Sourdough and Pâte fermentée which gave a lot of flavour to the bread while the soaked rolled oats and flax seeds made it nicely moist.

Continue reading →

April 28th, 2010

JT’s Rustic bread with three preferments

Category Bread Tags: Biga, Poolish, Preferment, Sourdough 22 Responses

MC posted last week the portrait of the Baker John Tredgold , one of nine Bakers of the Bread Bakers Guild Team USA 2010. They train at the moment for the North American Louis Lesaffre Cup which takes place in Las Vegas in September.

And he gave MC the recipe of the bread that won him a spot in the Team, including a excelsheet with the formula in Bakers percent. The bread sounds great (of course it do. It is a winner recipe). It contains three different preferments: Poolish, biga and sourdough. I love breads with different preferments because they give so much flavour to the bread. So I knew instantly that I had to try this recipe.

JT uses malted wheat flour type 85 (85 mg minerals per 10g flour) and all purpose flour. I only have excess to wheat flour type 550 (55 mg minerals) and type 1050 (105mg minerals), so I sat down with the excel sheet of the formula and start calculating. At the end I came down with a mixing ratio of type 1050 and 550 that should yield a similar dough as mixing type 85 and all purpose flour.

Continue reading →

April 14th, 2010

Baguette Rolls

Category Rolls Tags: Rice, Sourdough 8 Responses

I am still on my quest for the perfect crumb in my rolls. The crumb should be light and fluffy under crispy crust. And at Yeastspotting there are always inspiring entries. This time the Bahn-Mie-Baguettes of Drfugawe caught my eyes. After reading the post on “The lost world of drfugawe” I was hooked. Adding blended rice to the dough of this vietnamese baguette should make the crumb velvety and light. This is something I had to test!

Because there was no left over rice I had to cook rice very long, so it get very soft. The next morning it was very easy to blend the rice with the food processor. Continue reading →

January 13th, 2010

Bread with Nuts

Category Bread Tags: Nuts, Sourdough, Yoghurt 27 Responses

After all the sweet breads, stollen and cookies during holiday season I need now a bread with lots of whole wheat and healthy ingredients. When I take a look at my pantry I found a lot of leftover nuts from Christmas baking. In my fridge I found an open pot of yoghurt so I decided to use it up, too.

The bread I bake with this ingredients is hearty and healthy and very delicious. Continue reading →

December 26th, 2009

Sweet Starter

Category Bread, Starter and Preferments Tags: Preferment, Sourdough 33 Responses

Michael Suas recommend in “advanced bread and pastry” to create a sweet starter to bake sweet bread like Panettone or Pandoro. Due to rising this starter on high temperature and many feedings, the growth of wild yeast is encourage as wells as the growth of homfermenting lactobacilli while bacteria producing acetic acid are inhibited by the high temperature. This produce a very vigorous but jet very mild tasting sourdough.

We need this very vigorous starter because the high amount of sugar and butter in the dough of Pandoro or Panettone inhibits the growth of yeast.

To keep the starter on a constant temperature I placed it in my microwave and turn the light on (just the light, not the microwave!). The light bulb produce enough warmth to heat the microwave to 30°C what is perfect for the starter. Continue reading →