Ilya Flyamer's blog

Posting a bit late - last weekend it was Purim, so I baked the traditional Hamantaschen and cinnamon rolls :) I think this year the Hamantaschen are the best ones yet.

We bought a lot of Turkish black olives last week and I thought finally it's time to bake olive bread.

It came out super well, so I decided to share the bake here. Dough is more or less 50/50 ruchmehl (Swiss high extraction flour) and white flour, but I didn't write down the exact proportions. Total flour weight, including 50 g of prefermented whole rye from the starter, is 450 g. Not too high hydration, in the 70% range, but also with additional liquid from the olives (around 80g after pitting), and a glug of olive oil. Since the olives are salty, I reduced the salt a little, 8 g instead of the usual 10g. After adding the olives the dough got much darker and acquired some pretty dark purple streaks, which came out beautifully in the final crumb. Did some typical stretch and folds etc, after a few hours it seemed the dough was ready, so I shaped it and final proofed mainly on the balcony, where I suspect the temperature is a little higher than the fridge at the moment, so the fermentation doesn't stop completely, but progresses very slowly. It rose somewhat, and next day I baked it with steam.

Bread came out crunchy on the outside, not too fluffy, but very soft inside, and very tasty. Actually amazing to eat with some more olive oil.

Been a while since I posted any bakes, finally decided to do it again. Baked this mostly rye bread (about 70% whole rye and the rest bread flour) with seeds over the weekend.

Didn't measure everything very carefully, but vaguely:

200 g liquid-ish rye starter, perhaps 150% hydration or so

Preferement with the starter, and 200 g whole rye flour, 250 g warm water. Also added a few pieces of old white bread as altus - soaked it with hot water first, but seems like not long enough, some pieces didn't fully disintegrate, it seems. A a few hours at 28C until well risen and a little sour.

Final dough with about ~500 g whole rye flour, ~300 g bread flour, 150 g toasted and soaked mixed seeds (crushed linseed, pumpkin and sunflower), 14 g salt, tablespoon of malt extract, warm water until dough resembles a soft paste. Fermented around 3 hrs at 30C until well risen and shows holes on the surface. Poured into tins, smoothed the top, sprinkled sunflower seeds. Final proof at 33C until well risen. Sprinkled surface with water, baked in a hot oven(started 240C after a few min reduced to 200C) until done. When taking out sprinkled with water again, wrapped in a towel to cool down.

Surprisingly light, and has a nutty taste from the seeds.

Traditional post with homentaschen and other sweet bakes for Purim! This year with fresh yeast and CLAS.

Dough formula: https://fgbc.dk/31i0

Haven't posted anything for a while, thought to rectify with this quick and easy recipe for sourdough deli rye bread.

Here is the formula: https://fgbc.dk/2rfu

Process is simple. Refresh a rye starter, so you have enough (I keep mine in the fridge, and I fed it in the morning with warm water and it was ready in the afternoon), keep it at 28C. Just before going to sleep, make a somewhat stiff rye preferment with all of the rye flour for the bake, keep at 28C for around 8-9 hours - it should grow significantly, get spongy, acquire prominent sour smell. In the morning mix the final dough, using warm water. I used a mix of 1:1 Ruchmehl (Swiss very high extraction flour) and white bread flour for the non-rye portion. It should be on the stiffer side, around 70% hydration in my case. Keep the dough warm (28-30C), for me bulk was done in under 2 hours! It grows quite a lot and quite quickly. I gave it a couple of sets of folds in that time to strengthen the dough.

Turn out the dough, divide into portions, preshape. Leave for 20 min, then shape. The dough doesn't handle very tight shaping, the prettier of the two breads was just shaped by flattening of the preshaped boule, folding and then rolling like baguettes to give a nice tapered shape.

Final proof on a couche, time would depend on the temperature, I gave them around 1 hr and then baked the first one with steam (20 with, then until done without), while the second one was moved to the balcony with around 0C there. I think the second one was proofed a little better, so perhaps I jumped the gun with the first one somewhat. Not sure baking with steam was the right choice, but that's up to the baker. I also applied a cornstarch glaze when taking them out of the oven.

I am no expert on what deli rye bread tastes like, but this is the taste I remember from the community bake a couple of years ago, and from my few encounters with this style of bread "in the wild" - except the crust, I guess it shouldn't be baked with steam?

Anyway, a very quick recipe (bread can be ready for lunch, just need to start the preferment) with convenient easy to use and remember gram measurements!

Really pleased to have finally produced a beautiful loaf worth sharing :) Recently I didn't have much time for baking, so most of the time just put stuff together randomly with no specific idea in mind. It was kind of the same this time, but worked out well.

I had the idea to use pasta water in a bread. Seems like an easy way to incorporate a little gelatinized starch, and if it's still hot after cooking, would help raise the starting temperature. The issue is pasta water is very salty, so I decided to substitute only 1/3 of the water with pasta water, and reduce the salt a little bit.

Here is the formula: https://fgbc.dk/2k87 Very simple dough with around 100g rye starter (refreshed overnight and then left in the fridge all day), a little rye flour to finish the leftovers in the bag, and 400 g high extraction flour. 200 g water, 100 g pasta water, 2.5 g diastatic malt, 8 g salt.

Pasta water was still rather hot, so the dough was warm after mixing. I simply combined everything and left for a while for the gluten to form. Did a couple sets of folds and the dough felt strong. It was surprisingly active, although recently due to infrequent baking my starter is not the strongest. It seemed about ready in around 3.5 hrs, I gave it a gentle coil fold as a preshape, and then shaped after 30 min. Cold proofed overnight, then baked on a steel with steam.

Very soft crumb, typical taste for the flour I am using, nicely caramelized crust. I like the nice and even browning, I suspect it's the combination of gelatinized starch and malt that really helps bring nice colour (since gelatinized starch is hydrolized very easily - I think this contributed to the fast fermentation too).

Looking at the crumb, maybe I should have given it just a little bit more time in bulk, maybe 30 min would do the trick. Still, very pleased with the result!

I haven't posted for a while since I've been busy and wasn't baking anything particularly interesting. But there have been a few posts about different carrot rye bread variations recently, and I was curious about this idea. I decided to make a big "experiment" out of it this past long weekend, and combined different techniques and ingredients to see what comes out.

Here is the formula and brief method description: https://fgbc.dk/2h9c

To walk you through it, I had:

1. Scald with rye schrot, grated carrot, and caraway
2. Altus - old dried up rye bread, soaked with hot water (I kept all the water, didn't wring it out)
3. Overnight preferment including the previous two stages and a little more rye schrot
4. Final dough with whole rye flour, some high extraction wheat flour (ruchmehl), malt extract, and IDY for lift

Scald needed some extra water relative to what I planned because of all the carrot... Otherwise it wasn't even covered by the liquid. No problem, just add less water to the final dough. Scald was at 65C for around 8 hrs.

All fermentation was done at elevated temperature (above 28C, final dough at above 30C).

Sprinkled pumpkin and sunflower seeds on top of the dough in the pans.

Baked in loaf pans to make my life easier, and to allow a wetter dough. Filled pans a little over half way, and stopped final proof when dough almost reached the top, and it felt very fragile, with pinholes starting to appear.

Here is what I got after baking (a few min at 280C, then lowered to 230, then 200, for around 40 min).

The crumb is ridiculously moist, and yet almost not gummy. I can almost get some water to come out of it when pressing on the crumb, like a sponge. I've never seen anything like this.

The flavour is very pleasant. A lot of complexity, I can taste the caraway, and a little of the maltiness, but nothing dominates. Can't say I actually taste the carrot, although there was so much of it, and it is clearly visible in the crumb. Not sure why there are some spots of dense dough in the bread, I wonder if I simply didn't mix it well enough... But they aren't really bothering me. The top crust is a little separated, and the top is a little concave, so perhaps I overproofed just a little. But no big deal.

Very interesting result in the end, enjoyable and unusual bread!

Recently after starting to go to work every day I don't have much time to bake during the week, so we completely ran out of bread by the weekend, and I wanted to quickly bake some nice bread. So I turned to CLAS in combination with IDY.

Made two seeded breads in my small bread pans. Toasted 30 g sunflower and 50 g pumpkin seeds. Soaked 30 g crystal rye malt with boiling water, together with those toasted seeds, and also added 30 g crushed linseeds. Used together with the soaking water in the dough. I wanted to try using altus in this bread, but forgot!

For the flour, I made a mix of 500 g total, ~220g ruchmehl (high extraction wheat flour - used up leftovers), ~80 g whole rye, 100 g whole wheat and 100 g white flour. Used together with ~80 g CLAS, 11 g salt, 3.3 g IDY and enough warm water to make a very wet dough. After mixing using a hand mixer with spiral attachments and some folds about 30 min later the dough was somewhat stronger. Fermented about 1.5 hrs at 28C until looked about doubled in size. When preshaping I actually thought it could have worked as a hearth loaf, but my banetton was too small, so I just split into two small bread pans as I was planning originally, filling them about halfway. Sprinked some sesame seeds on top. Proofed at 30С until dough filled the pans. Tried slashing them, but the dough was too soft, even with a razor didn't leave a nice score. Baked with steam for 20 min, and without steam until nice colour, then also browned the sides after removing from the pans. Scores are almost not visible, the oven spring wasn't huge (I guess I proofed them just to the edge of overproofing).

The bread is very nutty and very clear seed flavour, with a soft and pleasant crumb, and thin slightly chewy crust.

Continuing to enjoy the particular high extraction flour widely available here in Switerland aka Ruchmehl. It is very strong, holds a lot of water, and produces tasty and fluffy bread. Very non-white, but also without any grassiness or bitterness that whole wheat breads sometimes have.

This time I threw together some dough for two loaves using 110 g rye levain (1:10 grown during the day at 25C until doubled and then refrigerated until afternoon next day), some of leftover liquid starter (~110 g also, has been in the fridge for a long time) from the experiments following Rus Brot's "yeast-less" bread (which contained some rye schrot, red rye malt, active barley malt, and some raisins), lightly toasted and soaked 50 g pumpkin and 50 g sunflower seeds, and also a couple handfuls of toasted sesame seeds, with 800 g ruchmehl and water until good consistency, not trying to push the hydration, I'd guess around 75% accounting for everything.

I used warm water and kept the dough warm around 25C, but still was surprised how quickly the fermentation proceeded: the dough looked and ready in around 4-4.5 hours, despite the levain having been refrigerated, and the liquid starter had been in the fridge for 3 weeks I think.

Pre-shaped, shaped, rolled in sesame seeds, and final proofed overnight on the balcony, which should be around fridge temperature. The loaves visible grew by morning, and actually felt quite fragile on the verge of overproofing. Luckily I think I caught them just in time, they had decent oven spring, and great crumb. Forgot to take a picture of the batard-shaped one, here is is after cutting:

There aren't too many seeds in the crumb, but the pumpkin and sunflower seeds are quite large, so biting just into one gives a very nice nutty taste. The sesame seeds on the crust are as usual completely intoxicating. Crust is quite thin and crispy, crumb is soft and tender. There is clearly some sourness, more than I usually get, probably due to using refrigerated starters, in particular the liquid one. Not sure if it's visible in the photos, but I think even the tiny amount of red rye malt (less than 10 g) from the liquid starter darkened the crumb a little and gave a reddish hue, looks quite nice.

Anyway, I'm still very pleased with this flour, such a thrown together recipe, but the result is great. And nice to bounce back from semi-failed rye breads from my previous post.

Last year Rus Brot posted a series of videos in an attempt to reproduce and demonstrate how bread was, or at least could have been baked, "in the old times" in Russian villages: https://youtu.be/meVg13NtnPw. "Yeast-less" refers to a fad in Russia about how using commercial yeast is bad for you, and sourdough bread is marketed as "yeast-less", which is of course absurd (and he's made fun of this multiple times on his channel). For a long time I couldn't be bothered to try following these instructions, except for using his proposed way of creating a liquid rye sourdough starter ("kvass"). That worked exceptionally well for me back in Moscow, to create a very strong starter within two days.

Now that I am sort of settled here in Basel and got all my equipment including the heating pad for temperature control, I finally decided to try and follow all instructions from the start (create a new starter again) and actually bake some bread with that technology. It did seem interesting: instead of maintaining the starter, a little portion of mature dough is dried by rubbing 1:1 with flour to preserve for a long time. Then this dry starter crumbs are used to inoculate a liquid starter "kvass", which is used for pre-dough and dough. And again a small portion of the dough is dried up for the future.

Unfortunately, for some reason, my attempt to make the starter here didn't work out, my suspicion is the water I used was too hot (normally for refreshing a starter this temperature would have been perfectly fine, but perhaps to start a new one it was too much). To be on the safe side in case actually it was the flour, when repeating I used rye schrot mixed with barley malt instead of whole rye flour, and some raisins, and then everything went perfectly.

Bread Nr 1

The first bread he recommends baking is 100% whole rye. Which I did. On the outside it looked great!

And it tasted nice too, just simple robust whole grain rye. But it had these weird cracks inside, I've never seen this before, very curious where it could have come from...

The bread was huge (from 1 kg flour), and quite dense, so best eaten in thin slices, so it's been three weeks and I still haven't finished it, since I am temporarily here on my own. While it's a bit dry on the outside under the crust now and hard to cut, inside it's still moist, and no signs of any mold are visible. Today toasted some small peaces in olive oil with salt, pepper and garlic powder, they were great as croutons in a salad.

Bread Nr 2

Now after almost three weeks of no bread baking I was bored and although I still haven't finished this bread, I decided to bake the next bread following his instructions. Dry dough is resuspended in warm water with flour and malt extract, and left to ferment for 20-24 hours at 25-26C. I mixed it in the morning before work, and when I came back home the starter was already bubbly and frothy - but not at all sour yet. So I just stirred it vigorously, and then once more before bed. Then it had a bit of acidity and more complex smell. In the morning about 23 hrs later it must have overfermented, because there were no bubbles at all! Must have consumed all the food and gone quiet.

I assumed the yeast and bacteria were all still there, and just proceeded with the pre-dough (5.5 hrs at 28-29C - I gave it extra 30-40 min to account for the sleepy starter, and also I tend to like a touch more sour bread than his default recipes), and the final dough (1.5 hrs at 30C), shaping and final proof. Like in the video I used some high extraction wheat flour in this recipe (I used ~17% Ruchmehl, in place of his 15% grade 2 flour). The dough was very pleasant to work with, easy to shape and I had a good feeling about it - the only second thought I had was it didn't seem quite as airy as . I final proofed for 40-45 min above a tray of hot water, air temperature was around 35C. Then applied liquid dough, docked and baked - all just like in the video. Just this time I split the dough into to loaves, planning to give one away, so I don't end up eating it all again on my own for three weeks.

The loaves looked good, the only thing they had these back spots, which from experience I know show bubbles just under the crust. But what does the presence of these bubbles mean about the dough? I don't know.

Then net day (today) I cut into one of the loaves. And was greeted with this crumb:

Had it been a wheat bread, I would have assumed it was underfermented, with denser areas between large holes. But I've never seen anything like that in rye bread! Would one expect the same crumb structure defect from underfermentation? Or is that another issue? The crumb is not sticky, and not crumbly, can be cut with a serrated bread knife without leaving any marks on it. But the caverns are a clear issue... Tastes good - just like I remember simple mostly rye bread tasting in Russia. Nothing too special, just sturdy with a prominent taste.

Curious what other might think about the issues with these breads, and what could have caused cracks in the first bread, or caverns in the crumb in the second bread.