Mike Nolan
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We're quite a ways from the edge of town, but we've got some foxes living in our back yard or a neighbor's yard, we see one of them regularly and we've heard a vixen call. (It sounds like a wounded cat.) We've seen coyotes and a few deer, too, plus the usual assortment of possums, raccoons and skunks. (I haven't actually seen a skunk, but I've sure smelled them!)
A few years ago there was a river otter on our back porch, looking totally lost, since the nearest creek is over a mile away. It was after some really heavy rains, my guess is he got flushed downstream by rushing waters and was trying to find a route home.
And then there was the elk that we think probably ran through our back yard because of where they found him. He had been spotted a couple of blocks away in the parking lot at a nearby middle school. He broke his leg jumping a fence that can be reached from our back yard and animal control had to put him down.
I see turkeys and some kind of grouse or pheasant near the middle school all the time. Ducks and geese stay in Lincoln year-round these days, a neighbor sees them in her lawn on her security camera, usually in the early morning.
Sounds more like it was part of a larger block that someone cut up into smaller blocks. Bakeries can buy relatively large blocks of it, like 20 pounds.
I know of bakeries that are selling repackaged bags of flour, too. Apparently they don't have to meet all the normal packaging and labeling requirements.
My mother-in-law and her 2nd husband lived near Bayfield WI on Lake Superior for many years, they saw bears on a regular basis. They gave up on finding a way to keep them from opening their garbage cans.
BA, if you happen to see that fresh yeast at the store again, can you take a picture of it and send it to me?
There's been an interesting discussion on fresh versus ADY or IDY on the BBGA Forum, with one baker talking about getting a case of fresh yeast in the summertime that was, well, awful.
Our plan is for BLT's tonight.
Not all rye flour is 'whole grain' flour, just like not all wheat flour is 'whole grain', but I suspect aside from 'white rye' most rye flours would have more of the germ and bran than an AP wheat flour would have.
I ordered two different assortments of rye flours (8 packages in all) from NY Bakers, but when I ran out of the medium rye flour first (most of the Ginsberg recipes use it), I ordered 15 pounds of it from Bakers Authority, and I'm about a third of a way into the second bag.
I got the impression from a source I cannot recall that there are some aspects of rye flour that make feeding your wheat-based starter some rye flour every now and then a good thing. I don't recall if concluded it was enzymes or just a different and more robust type of starch.
The 1993 French law that controls what certain types of French bread can contain specifically mentions a starter that is based on either wheat or rye. See Article 4 in French Bread Law.
I can see my rye starter bubbling within a half hour of when I feed it, and it will double in about 6-8 hours. Using it as the inoculant for a wheat levain has been interesting, it takes about 12 hours for it to be active enough to make bread.
No, this is a recipe I adapted from one my mother-in-law made years ago.
When I've made the Stella Parks food processor recipe, I bake it in an 8 inch pan, because it won't fill up a standard (9 inch) one pound loaf pan.
I really prefer free-form breads, but that recipe would probably produce a flatbread. (Maybe I'll try it as one some time.)
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.
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