Sourdough Recipes

Do you keep your starter in the fridge?

January 14, 2013
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If you keep your starter in the fridge you can be of help with the starter taste test experiment I’m carrying out as I type for my sourdough book.  I’ve started to feed 6 different starters, a mix between using different flours and different hydrations, and one of them I’m keeping in the fridge.  I would […]

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Dough Globe by the Foundry Mint Digital team

November 20, 2012
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There has been a song my 5 year old sings that keeps popping into my head whenever I thought about writing this post, it goes; “I don’t want to grown up, I want to be a Toy ‘R’ Us kid…kid…kid…kid”.  When adults used to ask me as a kid, “what do you want to do […]

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Sourdough baked in a tin – no need for proving baskets

November 15, 2012
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This is an example of the practical thing that will be in my book, my whole aim with the book is to follow-on from the principals of this site; to demystify the world of sourdough. And Yes!  You can put the sourdough dough in a tin for the last rise just as you do a […]

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Why protein amount in bread flour is irrelevant

October 5, 2012
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I’ve been using the same rollermill white flour for a year and a half, and pretty much every batch I’ve received has been consistent as I would expect from a large mill with all the whistles and bells of test bakers and  Farinograph machines.  However all of this consistency changed with my last arrival of the […]

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Baking by Numbers – that’s what bakers do

October 4, 2012
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I’ve heard and read professional bakers claim they’re good bakers because they’ve been baking for ‘x’ amount of years.  Oh really?  How does following a recipe make you a good baker?   The flour you buy whether you’re a homebaker through a supermarket or if you’re a professional baker buying direct from the miller is […]

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English Durum Wheat Loaf

July 15, 2012
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I’ve been told by three different reliable sources that various attempts have been tried in the past in this country to grow durum wheat for making British pasta but one attempt after another have seen these experiments fail, the bottom line being, ‘you can’t grow good enough quality durum wheat in this country, it doesn’t […]

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A handmade loaf the perfect Thank You present

July 14, 2012
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It’s the end of the school year and instead of the usual box of chocolate, pot plant, or my preferred gift of a bottle of wine to my kid’s school teachers it seemed fitting I gave them a handmade sourdough.  And in my case not forgetting the receptionist who’s had  to listen to my constant […]

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Tybalt Loaves for the Prince of Wales at Felin Ganol

July 12, 2012
Tybalt Loaves for the Prince of Wales

On Tuesday I posted to Anne and Andy Parry at Felin Ganol watermill these 4 sourdough loaves made with Tybalt flour, a Welsh flour, for the royal visit to the mill by the Prince of Wales.  Anne had a display of various baked goods using her flour and apparently Prince Charles made a bee-line for my […]

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If This Is Artisan Baking Give Me Supermarket Bread

July 5, 2012
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The selection of breads above and below came from a stoneground mill bakery.  I apologise now for the poor quality of the photos, it’s not my intent to make this bread appear inferior to prove a point, originally I didn’t plan to write about it and the camera photos were only for record keeping.  I […]

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Writing an ebook on Sourdough, part one: Starters

June 27, 2012
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It’s not news I’m writing an ebook on Sourdough, for a while I’ve been twitting, and posting photos on twitter and facebook sharing my frustrations with my research and most recently my biochemistry lessons. Not so quietly I sit here banging my head on the table exasperated by my dimness. Ask me to make something, […]

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Killing a Loaf by 30 minutes

June 3, 2012
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Last week in the dizzy temperature heights of 27˚C (80F) the dough was out of control.  Normally there are a few days, weeks even of adjustment in handling the doughs from cool to hot temperatures but this crazy weather went from the cool 19˚C to the high twenties overnight. Suddenly you realise what a fine […]

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Sourdough Held for 36hrs to Acidify

May 26, 2012
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At the same time I held the pouliche (poolish) loaf in the last post here for 36 hours in order to achieve a sourer crumb, I also had this sourdough sitting alongside it for the same reason. This dough was made mild, as per my usual sourdough loaf of 30g starter fed with 100g of […]

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A Levain and a Poolish hung out together

May 13, 2012
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I carried out this experiment with the full intention of predicting a failure with the poolish.  What I wasn’t prepared for was that the result wasn’t the complete failure I had anticipated, this led to further experiments with the poolish, very successful ones in fact. It’s established a sourdough dough will give you plenty of […]

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Scoring, Slashing Sourdough

May 8, 2012
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I’ve already posted lots of photos on scoring/slashing loaves in this post here, but Nicola asked me last night to show her how, and since I had 2 loaves already in the fridge for baking this morning it would be easy to video scoring them…well easy because I had a second pair of hands to […]

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Fermentation The New Sexy, Microorganisms The Next Taste Frontier

April 15, 2012

Two years ago I can’t imagine I would be as excited  as I was yesterday about watching David Chang’s Harvard Lecture on “Microbiology: An Overlooked Frontier”  he made in 2011, David is the chef at Momofuku.  This lecture on microbes and their flavour profile is interesting for me personally on two different levels, one because […]

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