On Tuesday, I baked the Honey Spelt Sourdough Bread. The levain took a long time to develop; at twelve hours, it did not have that many bubbles, but four hours later, it was ready to use. The first rise took 90 minutes, and after 90 minutes, I thought that I was not going to get much more rise, so I slashed and baked. However, the top really burst open (slashing job could have been better), so it probably needed to be left to rise for another 30 minutes. I like this bread a lot, but I struggle to get it to turn out consistently. I bake it in the Emile Henry long baker, and I like how well it bakes. My issue seems to be with judging the rising times, which are much longer than the recipe states, but that may be the cold house. I made two changes to the recipe in that I used Bob’s Red Mill artisan bread flour for the cup of King Arthur AP, cut the salt from 1 1/4 to 1 tsp., and added 3 Tbs. special dry milk. I’m sure it will taste good when I cut into it for lunches tomorrow, but I would like to get a prettier loaf.
In addition, I baked cornbread to go with some of the leftover soup. I used my regular recipe, but I used half medium and half fine ground cornmeal, as I want to stretch out what I have left of the fine grind, as Bob’s Red Mill is not selling it anymore.
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