Sesame Semolina

One of my favorites from last week.

50% bread flour, 50% durum semolina
67% water
2% salt
0.2% instant yeast
6% butter
30% liquid [100% hydration] levain.

Most excellent tasting bread.

Beautiful creamy yellow crumb [one of my grad students couldn't wait and cut it hot, but you can get the picture] and openish crumb structure. This one was molded by my assistant, her very first go - good work.

San Francisco Baking Institute

Just spent 2 weeks at the San Francisco Baking Institute http://www.sfbi.com - getting the lowdown on hand-crafted breads.

An excellent 2 weeks, Artisan I, then Artisan II, back-to-back. Bit of a stamina test but ably led by the energy and tremendous skills of our instructor Steven Isaac. Both weeks had crews of about 16 students that were all a delight to work with. The whole place is dedicated to great bread and SFBI has very good facilities and instructors to get novices or experts to their next levels in baking.

Pre-class coffee was enlivened by whatever pastries the professional 18 week class had made the day before. Lunches were great; ranging from fresh wheat-germ baguettes with mozzarella, tomato, and fresh basil, to soups, fresh hand-made pizzas, and the best ever sandwich rye bread, among others. Just a great experience all round.

This is the first time I've tried to adapt my newly learned skills to my own bakery with its specific limitations, but not bad none-the-less. Certainly more attractive loaves than I've been able to make in the past. Still some problems with the steam in my oven... blah blah... but the crust was nice and thin and crispy if a little dull from insufficient steam. Not too bad internal crumb structure, despite the seam blowouts that happened because my "people" were baking pan bread for the breeding program today and just had sheet pans and not hearthstones in the oven.

The pictures tell some of the story [minus aroma and taste], good enough as straight-dough emergency bread to have with my own mozzarella, tomato, and fresh basil tonight.



These are cereal scientist-style standard test-bake pan breads baked by my able assistant; the 'real' work going on in the lab today.

Field day fun

Production line baking in the lab...
Hand shaping 16 2lb [1 kg] sandwich loaves per batch
Using the wrong [left] and the right [right and above] flour for the job... To make a point about the inadequacies of low protein flour [left] for breadmaking.
Barley herb bread [a quick bread] 50% of the flour is a waxy wholegrain hull-less barley flour with lots of soluble beta-glucan fiber
Barley blueberry muffins... 2/3 of the flour is the same waxy wholegrain barley.
Out to the field day with the "good-dough, bad-dough" show. Wheat products in a wheat field... makin' dough while the... well at least it was not raining.

Use your loaf !
Engaging the audience
Feeding them always helps.Same deal 400 meters away for the barley products; barley foods in a barley field

Ikke "naesten det aegte"

Nu brødet er "det gode". Let farvede brød til venstre er lavet fra 100 % byg, på samme måde som rugbrødet.

Baking Science student sourdoughs all in a row.

Baker's corner in the bake-lab -- all my sourdoughs -- L to R]; rye meal, barley flour, wholewheat flour, white flour

"Næsten den ægte"

Endelig: Næsten den ægte dansk rugbrød. Mange tak til Judby.dk for hannes “Færøsk surdejs-rugbrød" opskrift. Enkel, men smagsfuldt, og, som Aurion.dk siger, “Brød med sjæl og krumme”.

Jeg synes at man kan købe ikke dette slags brød I USAen.

In Aussie "Næsten den ægte" means "fair-dinkum"...

Same flour, same ingredients, same process -- except; left - a yeast preferment [poolish]; right - a sourdough preferment -- very different breads in external appearance, crumb structure and chewiness, and flavour.
Production line baking at work; some undisclosed experimental breads as sandwich breads. had a little problem with the scaling for the breads at the back in the second jpg; a problem with the baker, not a problem with the flour .Nice crumb for hand molded.

Same day; a nice part-wholewheat sourdough batard; very flavorful, thin crust, and chewy crumb