I’ve been working on my bread making for several years now.  I received The Bread Baker’s Apprentice by Peter Reinhart for Christmas and I’ve been baking quite a bit since then.  I’ve tried various styles of bread but mainly I’ve dealt with wild yeasted breads (sourdough).  For a few years I’ve been extracting various sourdough cultures.  One I started from organic white wheat berries and the other from organic rye berries.  The wheat based culture (I feed them both from bread flour now) came out rather sour, with a “classic” sort of sourdough taste to it.  The rye based culture is kind of unique.  It tastes very sweet and “lactic” (that’s the best way I can describe it).  It tastes sort of “milky”.  I really like it. 

Recently I traded a sample of the rye based culture (we call it “the baby” from back when we had to feed it constantly) for a sample from a friend of mine from The Herbfarm.  It’s a great start.  I knew is was going to be awesome when I first got it and within a few hours the container burst open from all the gas buildup (in the fridge).

Another thing I’ve been trying recently is a departure from Reinhart’s “hearth” baking method.  Instead I’ve been using the New York Time’s No-Knead bread technique of baking inside a Dutch oven.  Actually, I don’t have that sort of Dutch oven (I only have the big camping kind) so I use a Korean ceramic pot (claypot) style oven.  It seems to work just as well or better.

So now I’ve been trying it with all of my favorite breads.  I tend to like lean bread recipes (non-enriched) so the normal flow lately has been to make a firm starter, let it ripen for a day in the fridge, make the dough (no kneading!), let it ripen another day in the fridge, shape the dough, let it rise for a bit, then bake it inside the preheated ceramic pot (inside the oven).  I preheat the oven to 500 degrees, drop the dough in, cover, and then drop the heat to 425-450.  After 20 minutes I remove the lid from the pot and let it bake a while longer until the inside temp reaches 200.

Here are some other bread pics of bread that I’ve made.

 Sourdough Rye

Braided Challah