Greetings from SFO!

I keep thinking about buying a pullman loaf pan. You know, the kind with the slide-on lid. The novelty of a perfectly square loaf of bread intrigues me.

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wtg

Yesterday I fed a bit of my starter some rye flour as an experiment. Holy cow! @Jodi was right...

The jar was half full and it spent the night in the frig. It's almost up to the top and I'll have to find a bigger jar!

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Will let it develop for a while and try it in my next loaf of bread in a few days.

Jodi

lol, I sometimes add about a 1/4 cup of rye to my sandwich bread, it’s nice. Rye

doesn’t have much gluten so 100% rye bread is trickier to make.

Jodi

Think you need to use about 40% of your regular flour along with the rye.

wtg

The rye bread recipe that I use is 2 parts of regular flour to one part dark rye (I use Bob's Red Mill). Definitely a lot stickier than an all-bread flour loaf, but worth the extra work.

I've looked at Lithuanian rye bread recipes but haven't tackled any yet. Mostly rye and very dense.

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https://theryebaker.com/black-rye-breadjuoda-rugine-duona-lithuania/

What I grew up on. Wonder Bread was a shock the first time I had it...

wtg

@wtg said in Greetings from SFO!:

Yesterday I fed a bit of my starter some rye flour as an experiment. Holy cow! @Jodi was right...

The jar was half full and it spent the night in the frig. It's almost up to the top and I'll have to find a bigger jar!

Will let it develop for a while and try it in my next loaf of bread in a few days.

I put it in a jar that is twice as big and it's up to the top already and way more bubbly than I've ever seen starter. Nice sour smell. Will probably throw together a loaf on Sunday and will bake on Monday. Can't wait.

Jodi

Sandwich loaf. This time I managed to catch it before it stuck to the top bread pan. I make them smaller, so they don’t rise that much over the top. Put 1/3 cup rye flour in with the rest. And proofed it more slowly today on the counter, in our fairly cool kitchen (67 degrees) instead of in the oven - made it at 8:30 am, and baked at 5pm.

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wtg

Looks delish!!

I used my rye-fed starter today. I used my usual recipe (I weigh everything) and the dough is extremely sticky. I finally gave up and kneaded in some additional bread flour and got it to something I could at least handle. It's rising again. I'll see how it looks in a couple of hours. If it's risen reasonably, I'll form the loaf and put the proofing basket in the frig overnight and then bake tomorrow morning.

I tried a little of the dough and it is SOUR. Can't wait to see how it bakes up. I made corned beef today so it could chill overnight for easier slicing and hoping upon hope that I have a successful loaf so we can have corned beef sandwiches tomorrow for lunch.

Steve Miller

Do you guys put salt in your starter?

I’ve read that it makes the starter more sturdy - they call it “training the starter”.

wtg

I have not salted the starter. I don’t recall any of the blogs I’ve looked at mentioning it. Will check it out!

Jodi

No. No salt in my starter. I warm the water up a little and dissolve the salt in it. I mix part of my flour with the salty water first, they put the starter in.

Jodi

Thinking about this more - don’t know what the point is. Why make life harder for your starter? It’s not like you kill it off when you mix your bread recipe together.

Steve Miller

The theory is that if your starter is raised with salt in it then being combined with the salt in the dough won’t slow it down.

It’s one of many questionable assertions I’ve found bouncing around YouTube and Reddit.

WTF-Beta

Greetings from SFO!