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First high altitude sourdough bake

I've recently picked up baking again, in particular sourdough. My baking mostly occurs at sea level in CA, but I am spending part of summer at our house near West Yellowstone at 6,800 ft.

I brought my starter with me and did my first bake here. I anticipated altitude-related problems, but it turned out fine (I made a few adjustments).

The formula was:Modified Tartine formula

50% whole grain sourdough at 6,000 ft

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It has been a while since I did anything creative with my bread making. If there is such a thing as a "comfortable rut", our usual 75-100% whole grain sourdough sandwich bread has been just that. With the pending visit of a family member, I was inspired to dust off the clay baker and do something more creative for her. My scoring skills are rusty could use some work (they were never all that great really), but otherwise it looks pretty good so far. It's cooling at the moment; I'll edit and add a crumb shot later as time allows.

"No Oven" bread, a fun experiment

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This video popped up on my computer several weeks ago and it looked intriguing to play with. It definitely isn't going to win any awards for appearance or presentation.  

I tweaked the flour a bit (she uses 100% AP) and added a few seeds. I didn't take time to weigh some of the ingredients, this loaf was "flying by the seat of my pants" in some respects, lol.  

Flour 280 gm  (48 gm AP, 48 gm KA bread flour, 185 gm sprouted spelt)

Spelt Sourdough Baguettes

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We are having a mediterranean fish stew tonight for dinner and leftovers tomorrow so I decided to bake these spelt sourdough baguettes, which I haven’t done for almost 2 years.  Since I baked them last I’ve made some changes to how I develop the dough.  I now use my Ankarsrum Assistent which I find is as gentle as hand developing dough and I do much more gluten development than I used to.  The idea is that if I develop the gluten more than I used to, the dough should be able to be fermented for a longer time allowing better flavour development.

Orange Cardamom Loaf

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I hadn’t baked a cake in quite sometime and wanted something to share with the staff of our building.  I had this saved from quite sometime ago and never made it so it was overdue.

Ciabatta Multicereali

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Another Italian style bake using my DIY multi-cereal flour blend, as developed for my recent Pagnotta Multicereali bake.

It comprises 85% Dallagiovanna Manitoba flour with the balance being an equal parts mix of wheat, rye, barley, oats and rice grain all freshly milled together.

I've never had much luck with naturally leavened ciabatta - mine tend to be tough as old boots and with small alveoli, so I used fresh yeast in a 45% hydration biga. 100% of the flour is in the biga.

Sourdough Seeded Buns - with Nigella Seeds

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Nigella seeds add so much savoury depth to bread and works really well with sourdough. For anyone in Toronto, Blackbird Baking has a seeded loaf which uses a mixture that includes nigella seeds. Their seeded loaf was a staple for me many years ago. The defining feature of the loaf, I think, is definitely the addition of nigella seeds! Recipe here.