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I know a number of sourdough experts who recommend giving your starter some rye flour every now and then. I'm just going to keep a rye starter, when I want to make a wheat bread I've been making a levain using 5 grams of rye starter with 50 grams of wheat flour and 50 grams of water. By the time I add in another 500 grams or so of wheat flour, the rye is down to do less than 1% of the flour weight.
Unfed starter is in a state of reduced activity, personally when I'm making a levain for a batch of bread I do it the day before I want to bake, after I've fed the starter and let it sit for an hour or two.
My guess is you'll need to let your starter warm up for a few hours before you do much with it. Production bakeries don't throw out starter, I believe most of them feed it, wait a while, then take about half of the fed starter for the next day's bread batch. But they're baking every day, so they have more ability to adjust their starter's schedule to their baking needs than home bakers who only bake every few days, at most.
According to Chad Robertson, if you keep your starter in the refrigerator, it will tend to develop more acetic acid producing bacteria and less lactic-acid producing bacteria, because the latter don't like the cold as much. I think that makes for a more assertively sour starter and resulting bread. My baguettes have a levain base, and I can tell it is there, but it has a very mild sour taste, though it gets a bit more noticeable on day 2.
According to several experts, side blowouts are usually the result of under-proofing of the dough.
The last time I made the honey wheat bread, I had planned to have it ready for the oven by about 7:15, but we were making a short trip to pick up some plants that wound up running longer and it didn't get into the oven until well after 8:00. But it rose nicely and wasn't over-proofed, and the loaves were big and soft, with no blowouts even though I didn't score the top. (My wife says it is a little too soft, which makes it harder for her to slice thin.)
I assume it's the sugar in the orange juice that 'tames' the bitterness of whole wheat flour, though the acid might increase the amount of enzyme activity which would break down more of the starches in the flour. My honey wheat bread uses 1/3 cup of honey (in about 55 ounces of dough that makes 2 loaves) so that'll take care of any bitterness too.
I"ve made the Park food processor recipe several times, I can't say we had any problem with bitterness with it. However, it isn't what I would call a 'sandwich' bread so we don't eat it quite as fast. The next time I make it, I'll freeze half of it so that it doesn't go moldy on us before we eat it all. I think of it as more of a 'wintertime' bread.
Did you try to shape/seal it while the dough was still cold? That NEVER works for me.
Donuts is one of those things I've not attempted, because we don't have a deep fat fryer and LaMars makes such great donuts, why mess with them?
I remember my sister making donuts back in the 50's, but the nearest bakery was some 15 miles away. While I"m sure they made donuts there, what I remember were the cream horns, puff pastry filled with what was probably stabilized whipped cream and covered with powder sugar that left a dusting of powdered sugar on your hands, face and clothes when you ate them, but they were good! They also made a Vienna bread that you could smell a half block away.
Unless you make a trip to Canada or other places where they are sold, you're not likely to be aware of this. People caught sneaking them into the US can be fined and the Kinder Eggs seized by Customs agents.
Buttermilk does seem to be thicker than whole milk, although according to the USDA both are around 87% water.
Here the flour shelves aren't empty, the last time I was at Hy-Vee they had lot of KAF AP but I didn't see any KAF Bread flour, and they had several other brands including two house brands.
My older son has been doing baking out of the updated 'artisan bread in 5 minutes a day' book. Yesterday he baked a boule and a loaf out on his gas grill. The boule might have been a little underdone in the center, but our granddaughter thinks both are pretty good.
The last wheat storage report said wheat supplies were fairly normal. This article is forecasting a record wheat crop this season:
wheat supplyThere may continue to be intermittent channel shortages, as this is the time of year when home flour usage is usually at a low point.
We picked up some lettuce at the farmer's market, along with some gyros for lunch, so we'll have salad and leftover gyros for supper, and left-over pizza if that's not enough.
My stuffed pan pizza came out pretty good, but I should have used the shorter skillet. The flat pizza stuck to the baking stone, I probably didn't use enough cornmeal under it. Next time I'll do it on parchment.
The pizza bread was really good, the baguettes I've been making work very well for that. The pepperoni was a bit strong, though, I need to look for a milder brand. (We used to use Oscar Meyer, but I think they changed the formula a year or so ago, adding garlic.)
I thought the virtual pizza party was a big success, I think we should plan another virtual gathering. One possibility would be a virtual brunch, another would be a virtual afternoon (low) or early evening (high) tea.
Stuffed pizza and pan pizza have one thing in common, they aren't flat, so they need a pan with sides. But a stuffed pizza has at least two layers of dough, and I've seen a few that had three. (Beyond three and it is more of a lasagna, IMHO.)
The original Nancy's claimed to be the originator of the stuffed pizza, but at least one other north-side Chicago pizzeria had a similar pizza in the late 60's. The first time I went to Nancy's was after they had moved, because of urban renovation of their original location. A lot of the old crowd (including, reportedly, some Chicago gangsters) didn't follow them to the new location.
I don't remember Giordano's being in a house, I do remember a three hour wait for a table at a place on the far South side in 1969, but all I really remember was we had to park about 4 blocks away in mid-winter. (For us North-siders, it was a really long trip, especially when you pack 6 college students in a car.)
I was always more of a fan of thin crust pizza, which was more common on the North side. There was one place near south campus that Northwestern students favored that had a cracker-like crust that tasted a bit like matzoh, but my favorite was a hole-in-the-wall place in south Evanston that would deliver to campus. I think they had just one table, and it was mainly for those who were walk-in customers waiting for their pizza to get done so they could carry it out. I've never duplicated their sauce or crust, not sure what made them unique.
Chicago Magazine had a feature story on the '5 types of Chicago Pizza' back in the early 70's, I remember reading an early draft of it and having discussions with their features editor (a chess buddy) over whether it should be 5 or 7 types! (I was in negotiations to do 'casual dining' restaurant reviews for them when we decided to move to Nebraska, the person who eventually got that position was probably a better writer than I am anyway.)
I picked up some garlic-free Hillshire Farms pepperoni yesterday, I'm hoping it is fairly mild. (Most of their sausages are.)
It may have been what everyone else calls SAF Red, I don't normally buy SAF yeast, so I'm not familiar with their packaging.
I recently learned that there is a SAF Purple yeast, intended for fast rise commercial uses. I doubt it shows up in stores.
I made some levain in preparation for making baguettes tomorrow, and I also made the pizza dough for tomorrow night's pizza party.
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