How steam works Baking from the baker’s perspective sometimes looks like one simple process - put the bread in the oven, and the bread bakes. For the bread, it is an entirely different matter, with two distinct stages of baking. During the first stage of baking, which lasts around twenty minutes, the bread hits the oven, and it continues to rise with very rapid yeast activity until the yeast dies off when the dough reaches around 60ºC (140ºF) During this oven spring stage it’s good to have...
5 days ago • 4 min read
All About Rye Sourdough bread made from 50% rye and 50% whole wheat. Rye is probably the most misunderstood grain. To begin with, much of the rye bread found for sale contains only a tiny amount of rye, and most of these loaves also contain caraway and molasses, so many people think that a rye bread tastes like a mixture of wheat, caraway and molasses, and don’t know what real rye tastes like. The misunderstanding further deepens when baking with rye – it just does not behave at all like...
11 days ago • 4 min read
Understanding bakers percentages Firstly, I should say that there is no need to know anything about baker’s percentages to start making great bread, but understanding this stuff is helpful when it comes to tinkering with recipes, making larger or smaller batches, and understanding the differences between recipes and how different levels of water, starter, and salt affect the dough. Bakers percentages for the beginners whole wheat bread recipe shared here. Flour percentages Baker’s percentages...
18 days ago • 3 min read
How to swap white flour with whole grain flour in recipes I started baking whole grain bread in 2009. There wasn’t a whole lot of information out there back then. At first I diligently followed a recipe that was mostly white flour, with around 40% whole wheat flour, and made some OK bread, but after I while I wanted to get rid of the white flour completely. I quickly learned that replacing white flour with whole grain flour 1:1 does not yield great bread. Whole grain flours need more...
25 days ago • 5 min read
Scoring whole grain bread: is it necessary? Whole wheat sourdough olive bread with simple score marks Scoring is the process of cutting slits into the top of a loaf to control where it will burst during oven spring. When people baked in large communal village ovens, the way to easily tell one family’s loaves apart from another's was by the score marks – in those circumstances it was important for that reason. Some bakers will absolutely insist on scoring every single loaf. Other bakers never...
about 1 month ago • 3 min read
100% whole wheat sourdough bread recipe for beginners (works with fresh milled flour, spelt, einkorn, emmer, and khorasan too) This loaf has outstanding flavour and works beautifully either as a pan loaf or a dutch oven loaf. I’ll give instructions and photos for both versions. The recipe uses a pre-ferment (levain) to bulk up a tiny amount of starter. If you prefer to keep larger amounts of starter on hand, feel free to skip the pre-ferment part of the recipe and just use ripe starter...
about 1 month ago • 7 min read
Working with different sourdough timelines: same-day vs overnight vs pre-ferment If you’re new to sourdough, you may be wondering which baking timeline makes the best bread. The answer is “it depends”. It depends on your schedule, your goals, and the temperatures in your kitchen. At the end of the day, baking needs to fit in with your life, not the other way around. In this post I’ll discuss all the different considerations that go into different sourdough timelines, and why I use different...
about 2 months ago • 5 min read
Oh no! I forgot to set aside some starter! This wasn’t on my list of things to write about, but then yesterday I made a mistake, and thought I’d share my thoughts on what to do when this happens, and why it isn’t the end of the world. There is a tendency online for people to parrot stuff without having actual experience of it, and all of a sudden the top 9 pages of search results are all saying the exact same thing, and it’s hard to find out why people are saying this. The “don’t ever ever...
about 2 months ago • 3 min read
How to make, maintain, and bake with a desem starter 100% hydration starters are the most popular (and probably the easiest to get started with), but if you live in a cool climate, or if you have trouble with your starter overfermenting (or forgetting about it), or if you are working with lower-than-ideal protein levels in your wheat, it can be helpful to know about desem starters, and why sometimes it might make sense to convert your starter into a desem starter. A desem starter is a 100%...
about 2 months ago • 2 min read
Understanding the stages of starter growth: when ripeness matters, and when it doesn't Firstly, I should say that there’s no need to get stressed about perfect starter ripeness, and no need to go out and buy expensive temperature regulating gadgets or any special equipment. The idea of “ripe” is more of a spectrum rather than an exact point in time. There is quite a big window of “ripe enough” when you can bake great bread from your starter, and the cooler your room is, the longer this window...
2 months ago • 3 min read
