Mellow Bakers in June

The continuing story of the baked goods from “Bread” by Hamelman is back for the month of June. The following breads were on the menu:

1a. Vermont sourdough
1b. Vermont sourdough with whole wheat flour
1c. Vermont sourdough with increased whole grain
2.   Pizza dough
3.   Beer bread with roasted barley

I made two of the Vermont sourdoughs a few years back. They are quite similar to eachother.Vermont sourdough with whole wheat flour

Vermont sourdough with increased whole grain

So I just had to bake the ‘plain’ version of the Vermont sourdough for this month and that turned out great too.

Vermont sourdough

To be honest they’re all quite similar, the amount of whole wheat (10%) or whole rye (10 or 15%) doesn’t make a huge difference for me tastewise, it’s just too little. They’re good breads though, but no real need to have three versions of these in the book as far as I’m concerned.

Then there was pizza. Lovely pizza for this lovely weather we’re having here, perfect summer food. We all love pizza here and once you're used to home made pizza's the frozen ones from the supermarket just won't deliver anymore. I can have a real craving for pizza when the weather is sunny and you feel like eating outside. This pizza has to be planned a day ahead, making a biga. On baking day there's a fold and this is sometimes difficult to plan so your pizza is on the plate at dinner time. Pizza's with preferments may taste a little better, but with all that topping sometimes I just don't want to bother to be honest. Just for practical purposes this was too much of a fuss for me. Normally I just make dough and shove it in the fridge until I want to use it. This pizza is good, but not the best I've made.

Last but certainly not least was the Beer Bread with roasted barley. I couldn’t get hold of normal barley, let alone malted barley. I bought barley kernels at the health shop and tried to sprout them, but it seemed the kernels were sort of sanded on the outside, part of the husk was still on, but the germ was probably damaged and it couldn’t sprout anymore. Too bad, I really would have liked to try that.

I just roasted them and ground them… boy that smelled so good after roasting, like nuts, very good! and added it like that. It’s just a small amount in the end, so I’m not sure if I could taste them in the final bread. For beer I used Guinness, just because that was in the cupboard. The bread behaved like described in the book and it turned out to be a fine loaf. (I only baked one) This bread was my favorite from all breads that were on the Mellow Bakers list for June. It had a beautiful soft crumb, smelled delicious and fit for whatever you wanted to eat it with.
I’ll be back next month with some more breads from the wonderful Hamelman book “Bread”. If you still wondering if you should buy it, I’d say go for it when you love baking your own breads. See you next time.

Lien