My Bread Year: Buckwheat Batards

I don't really take recommendations from people. Well, people often give me recommendations, which I disregard, but also file away in one of the darkest corners of my brain. Which is to say, that I don't welcome ideas from others. For me, things just have to happen organically.

For example, earlier this month, Smitten Kitchen featured Shakshuka. I thought it looked interesting, but didn't run to my kitchen to immediately make it. Then, I finally put in a cookbook order at Amazon.co.uk, and got the Ottolenghi cookbook. No, there's no skakshuka recipe in there, but days after I got the cookbook, I came across a video of him making it.

And there you go. Now I want to make it.

But wait, you ask- There's a picture of bread at the top of this post, not of some awesome red pepper and egg concoction. I know, I know. All I have to say is that this are the Buckwheat Batards from Daniel Leader's Local Breads. I picked up some buckwheat flour at the store after reading about it, and all of a sudden, it started appearing everywhere.

I remembered the recipe, noted that the measurements were inconsistent, and checked to see if there was a correction on the Errata PDF released by the man himself. There was.

Why no more pictures? The starter was really ugly and dark, almost like a ball of mush. The loaves themselves weren't much better off, and the dough just didn't behave. I'm starting to think I'm settling into a comfort zone of sorts with the German wheat flours.

It wasn't so much that I didn't like the bread, but that I was underwhelmed by it. I did give a loaf away, and it was reported that the people who tried it thought it was amazing. So maybe I'm just too hard on myself or maybe I'm just way too used to wheat breads.

Yes, I'll revisit this one. But maybe I'll wait until people start a critical mass for Buckwheat.

For some truly beautiful Buckwheat Batards check out this post on The Fresh Loaf.

My Bread Year: Whole-Wheat Brioche

I hadn't intended on making Brioche. But one day I woke up and was craving it so much that I had to have it. Instead of cracking open a recipe, I decided to just find it. After all, I just wanted a piece, no?

The bakery in my street has pretty amazing bread, but their brioche is, well, not-so-amazing. It's made in muffin tins and, even though it has the tête, it's just not what I wanted. I wanted something specific, something just like- no- exactly like the buttery richness of the brioche from the beginning of the Bread Baker's Apprentice Challenge.

I wanted that brioche.

But I didn't make it. I spent about another week trying to find some- which is near impossible here in Berlin- before I remembered that Peter Reinhart's Whole Grain Breads has a recipe for Whole Wheat Brioche.

The recipe follows Reinhart's Epoxy Method, where two unlike doughs meet to create a stronger better dough. The soaker is essentially the water and salt, and probably serves as an extended autolyse of the flour, as well as to develop flavor. The starter or biga has a minimal amount of yeast, and also develops flavor, but also allows the yeast to multiply so that less yeast is needed overall. In this case, the soaker consisted of scalded milk, butter, flour and salt. The starter had the eggs, along with flour and yeast.

Both mixtures were difficult to work with because they were so thick. I wanted more liquid in the mixtures to make them easier to work with, but that didn't happen. I just mixed as well as I could and stuck the two mixtures in the fridge.

After a night and day of refrigeration, I took them out and mixed them together. Because they were so cold, they refused to mix, and I had to allow them to come to room temperature before they would even merge.

I sort of messed up in this part. After the mixing, the dough is supposed to go directly into the molds. I let it rise in a bowl before checking on the time in the book. I molded them about two hours into the first and only rise.

So, because this is supposed to be My Bread Year, overbrowned warts and all, I am presenting all breads as they came out. You may remember my Stollen disaster. No? Oh, maybe that's because I'm getting ahead of myself.

The electric oven I work with has an exposed element at the top, so breads usually come out browner than I usually want. Somehow, I seem to never learn my lesson, and usually let things become darker than usual. Though the dark bits were still delicious, the brioche would have looked even better if it hadn't been so dark.

But the bottom came out great!

As for the taste? Heavenly.

Well, at least when the bread was warm. It tasted completely like pancakes. The whole grain was sweet and nutty and the butter was just enough to make the crumb so tender. It was amazing.

The bad part? Well, when cool, the bread was dry and tasted a bit bland. I'm not sure why. Perhaps because the recipe has very little sugar, or because there wasn't enough butter.

Or, if I may completely take a wild guess. When warm, the bread was probably releasing more aromas, which helped make it taste better.

I'm still craving brioche, but not as much. I even paid a visit to Galeries Lafayette, thinking that if I couldn't find brioche there, I would give up. I found some, and it was good, but it wasn't the exact brioche I wanted. Again, not enough butter.

My Bread Year: Too Much Sourdough Starter Bread

The second batch of non-BBA dough this year was this one, baked about ago, but only posted now. Buying a half-loaf of bread weighing 1,7kg sort of derailed my bread plans since then, so you'll have to wait a while for more posts from My Bread Year.

So. One morning just before I left for work, I realized I hadn't made any bread and had way too much starter on hand. I usually build up my starters so that I have about 300g by the weekend for baking. If I'm feeling particularly ambitious, I'll start a day early and kick it up to 600g in order to have enough for a miche.


The DLX can handle an insane amount of dough. This one was 3,3kg, and didn't strain the machine, but almost filled it to capacity.


I occasionally make a sourdough in 15 minutes before I go to bed, and leave it to rise in the bowl of the DLX overnight. However, I have never tried letting it rise during the day, while I'm at work. Okay, once I did, but the dough didn't rise and the resulting product had to be thrown out.


This time, though, the dough rose, and I did a few stretch and folds before forming batards and one big miche.


Unfortunately, the bread was too big for the baking stone; some of the dough poured over.


The oven spring was unremarkable. Perhaps because I baked the miche after the batards, which meant the baking stone had cooled a bit. Still, the bread was flavorful, and remarkably hole-y.


I only managed to get a picture of one of the three batards. The others were eaten pretty quickly. They were pretty mangled, since they were a bit too long for my 30cm square baking stone.


Another example of the bread pouring off the edges. In this case it was because they were rolled out too long.


From this angle, it almost looks like a club foot.

No recipe this time because I lost the piece of paper on which I wrote the flour mix. The only details I can remember is that I used a mixture of Type 405 flour, which was on-hand, as well as some Type 1050 and Type 812. The hydration was 66% as calculated in the few rushed minutes before work.