Here's a glance at our daily bread production at Stella. From bottom left to right: challah (served with an order of coffee), "Everything Boule" (caramelized onions, poppy and sesame seeds, fennel), pre-formed sourdough baguettes, sourdough rye swirl, brioche, Eastern European Style Brown Bread.
Also not pictured, we do scallion-sesame brioche buns.
I started my very first batch ever of sourdough starter 6 days ago
. I feed it once a day with half whole wheat/half bread flour. Things are going well I believe. Lots of bubbles, especially in the first hours after a feeding. A watery layer exists on top many hours after a feeding which I assume is ok. Occasionally I will mix it with a wooden spoon as the watery layer looks a bit, hmmm, off-putting.
I made my first loaf of the 70% hydration sourdough bread, and it was a total success!! I'm so happy that my bread could come out looking like yours. There was one aspect that was rather scary and I would like to prepare for it better with the next loaf. I put my Le Creuset in the oven to preheat. My largest one is a 5 qt, and it was obvious when I pulled it out from the preheat that I was not willing to risk burning my hands when it came time to gently lay the boule of wet dough into the pot.
Hello baking friends. I thought I would share with you a few things about my grand attempt today to be adventurous and well, brave. I have a favorite recipe for traditional white/wheat bread that also uses eggs, oil, sugar, grated carrot, and raisons. And of course two packages of powdered dry yeast. I wanted to swap out the dry yeast for some of my now very abundant sourdough poolish. So here's what happened.....
I finally made my first sourdough boulle yesterday and it came out pretty good. I have a question regarding the shape. I would like to make the bread in a shape better suited for sandwiches. How can I use the same process to make it into a loaf or is there a better method?
Is there a "best shape" for every bread dough recipe?
For instance, if I wanted to do a batard with the 70% boule recipe, are there adjustments to make?
How about using the baguette dough (as in the video) for a batard or boule? Adjustments?
Hello everyone,
I took some of my original half bread flour/half whole wheat starter and decided to try a full on rye starter. It's been fed for the past 2 days and looks really great and definitely passes the float test.
How ever, it is super thick. My recipe is 250g of stone ground whole grain rye flour, and 250g of water. From my understanding whole wheat and rye flours absorb a lot more water. Which would explain why my rye starter is so thick.
I'm in my summer digs, much more compact than the AZ "ranchette" where I winter. I don't have a cast iron dutch oven here and don't want to find room for one. I do have a 6-quart Dansk Kobenstyle enameled steel dutch oven which has been around for years. (See pic...mine's deep blue.) http://bit.ly/1tfnVsh
Hello! I'm attempting to make the sourdough that Jacob shows in his video. I have a good starter that is at 100% hydration, and it passes the float test. I weighed all my ingredients. I hand kneaded my dough for about 20 minutes, and the whole time, the dough felt quite stiff. In the video, the dough looks nice and soft, and it looks like it stretches easily during the slap and fold. Even during my stretch and fold, the dough was stiff and it was much more work to make it happen. I'm at the rise before the final proofing and while it's risen well, it still feels stiff.