Five Grain News Today

I haven't posted here for a while. I bake most weeks once or twice, usually my favorite multigrain sourdough or a Buttermilk-Spelt Sourdough. I always have some San Joaquin Sourdough baguettes available in the freezer, of course.This week, I baked a batch of sandwich rolls made with Medium Vienna Dough from "Inside the Jewish Bakery." The plan was to have rolls for turkey

Just over 40 miles east of Cheyenne, near the Wyoming/Nebraska border, resides the fantastic Pine Bluffs Distilling. They are very big on the idea of keeping things local and this summer, they are launching five new whiskeys that support their local theme. Pine Bluffs Distilling sources grains just 30 miles away from their distillery so that should tell you how important it is for them to keep things local. The owner of Pine Bluffs Distilling, Chad Brown, recently spoke of how important it is ...

Based on my last bake which I felt didn’t have enough water, I wanted to see what would happen if I greatly increased the hydration for this bake.  If you do not include the soaker water the hydration is 70%, but with the soaker water it is a crazy sounding 109% hydration.  There was some spreading of the dough as it baked which I don’t like so I suspect the ideal hydration might be 5% less or just what the original recipe calls for.  The original recipe is Hamelman’s Five Grain which ...