Marking loaves

So I bake anywhere from 3 to 9 loaves each weekend, but those loaves from come three batches of dough.  Each batch I carefully change one variable to then determine which change was most advantageous.

A small trick I use to figure out which batch is which is to mark the bread (as shown here).

See more of my bread here:  http://goo.gl/EGJ0iL

Enjoy your bread,
    -Matt

Wild Yeasts

I've spent the last month experimenting with several variants of local sourdough yeasts that I've been able to culture.  I'm running them through a series of A/B experiments to see which have the best taste and crumb properties.

Since Posterous shut-down I'm also trying to find a easy way to post my photos.  You can always request to follow me on twitter.

Mineral Water vs Distilled Water

So this past weekend I ran a experiment that for whatever reason hadn't occurred to me before. I mixed one batch with my normal mineral water mix (I like Pellegrino) and another batch with just distilled water. You can see the results above - the mineral water loaf is on the left and the distilled water loaf is on the right.

What you can't see is that the distilled water loaf took 150g additional flour to get to the right consistency, which really surprised me. I'm going to try this experiment again this weekend to see if it was a fluke (or a mis-measure) or if there really might be something to this.

You may have noticed all my photos are gone. This is because the site I had been using for for the past 3 years (http://www.posterous.com/) has shut-down and now they've cleared out their image cache. I have all of the original images, I just need to re-upload and manually fix them (which is going to take a while).

If you are interested you can follow me on Twitter for weekly photos :)

      Cheers
       - Matt the Weekend Baker

Over-risen

So occasionally my Saturday morning routine is delayed and the 2.5 hour rising goes for 4+ hours. This really enhances the sourdough flavor, but it doesn't help the shape at all.

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Bread: I realized today the amount of ironware you have in the oven affects the temperature.

Whoops :)

FYI. I still haven't decided what to do when Posterus goes away. Any suggestions?

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Bread: Weekend loaves

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Bread: Weekend Bread with a 4 hour proof

FYI: Posterous will be closed soon (thanks twitter?) So I will be posting pictures differently in the future.

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Weekend Bread and Sunlight.

I'm experimenting with 500 degrees now (vs 450) with some positive results.

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Bread: Baking with semolina flour

The semolina flour flour browns but is a great way to keep the loaves from burning. 

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Hot fresh bread

Bakeries should take note of Krispy Kreme and have a "hot fresh bread" neon sign.

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Weekend sourdough

Enjoy your 3-day weekend!

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Weekend bread

I had more success with proofing in a cold kitchen when I sprayed some additional water on the dough and wrapped the bowl in a towel.

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Bread: 5 loaves

Happy Weekend. Stay Warm :)

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Weekend bread - happy Saturday!

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Weekend bread. The cold weather is extending my proof times.

The holidays were fun, but it's good to be home again.

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