Hi All,
I'd like to introduce myself. My name is Raj and I'm a home brewer,
winemaker, baker, and miller. I've been baking for about 2 years, the last
one entirely with levain (sourdough, levito naturale &c). One thing I've
tried recently is to make the Gosselin/Reinhardt ancienne with levain. It
turns out well:
200g poolish, levain, 100% hydration
500g flour, 5g diastatic barley powder
300-400g water, room temp, de-chlorinated
9g salt
1. The morning before, refresh the poolish to 200g.
2. The night before, knead flour, DME, and water into a stiff dough. Coat
with oil and chill overnight. Also chill the risen poolish.
3. The baking day, knead chilled dough and poolish together with salt. Keep
out for primary fermentation, 4 hours at 65F. When doubled, gently pour
onto counter, divide, shape, score, and bake at 475F.
My next experiment is to try this recipe with my home milled flour, 85%
extraction, 10% rye, white winter wheat, and to try retarding the final
mixed dough so that I can do it before work and bake when I get home.
Another trick I'd like to share comes from a loaf I tasted from a
woodburning oven. Like others, I lust after the photos in "The Bread
Builders". Breads I've had from wood-burning ovens often carry some
smokiness with them. So now I routinely put a few small pieces of soaked
hardwood chips onto the bottom of my gas oven, right over the hottest part,
before loading the dough. It imparts a nice smokiness to the crust.
Mesquite, apple, and oak all work fine.
Any other home millers out there? Anyone know about tempering and sieving?
Anyone experimented with flour aging?
best,
raj
Palo Alto, CA