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Happy New Year to you all.
This recipe is similar to the previous Vermont Sourdough posting only it has increased Whole Wheat. Once again, a great crust and crumb. I managed to reproduce the succes of the previous posting.
The fact that these levain breads only contain flour, water and salt + the levain (which has the same ingredients) and give a great result is just amazing! Bread making is alchemy!
I had to go to a party and had to bring some pastry with me. Made these ones : with 'crème au beurre.' I am sorry but I don't know how this is translated in English. If someone wants to let me know that would be great.
The ingredients are eggs, sugar, boiled sugar and butter. Basically what you do is add the boiled sugar sirup to the eggs and beat in the stand mixer. After that incorporate the butter.
I am into whole wheat it seems at the moment. So I decided to make this loaf. Once again from the Hamelman Bread book (page 246).
A tip I can give if you want to make this one too : the oven temperature (450°F) was too high for me. The author mentions in the book that you wil need to lower the temperature by about 15°F after 20 minutes (because of the pecans and raisins).
This did not work for me, I did not check in time and after 20 minutes of baking I saw that the crust was already too caramelized, so I lowered the temperature but it was already too late. So this one had a slightly dark crust, but I liked it even though I had to scrape some crust off.
This is one of the first loaves I made from this book and I find this a tasty bread with a firm crumb. Delicious bread!
I like no knead bread, it is very easy and quick made. You let it rise overnight and the next day you bake it. Very convenient and easy. The result is most of the times great, so is the taste. I must admit I made a few loaves that did not were that good, the trick is (even though it is a wet dough) not make it too wet.
This bread came out very nice I think. The crumb looks great, holes could have been larger, but since I did use rye and whole wheat it looks just fine. No knead bread : you should bake one, you won't regret.
"After a bad loaf comes a good one!"