This week in the ledger · Log 038 · Bread flour
A bench lamination is the most aggressive fold in bread baking: the dough is stretched out to a rectangle as thin as you dare, then folded back on itself like a letter. Done once, at 72% hydration, with 10% whole wheat, it produces the most even crumb in this ledger — an open honeycomb with none of the large corner tunnels that come from folding inside a bowl.
Read the log · 3 Nov 2026
Log 037 · 1 Nov 2026 · Ancient grains
Khorasan — sold as kamut — behaves unlike any other wheat in this ledger. Its gluten is strong but extremely extensible, so at 50% the dough stays slack and slippery for the first three folds and then tightens all at once in the last hour of bulk. Learning to wait through the slack stage is the entire skill.
Log 036 · 30 Oct 2026 · Enriched doughs
Thirty percent whole egg by flour weight is enough to change a dough's behaviour completely: the fat in the yolk shortens the gluten, the water in the white adds hydration, and the result is a dough that feels firm but bakes into something that pulls apart in strands. The double egg wash is what makes them look like they came from a bakery.
Log 035 · 28 Oct 2026 · Rye
The scald is the oldest trick in rye baking and still the most effective one. Pour boiling water over a third of the rye flour, let it cool, and the starch gelatinises. The loaf that follows is sweeter than the same recipe without a scald, keeps two days longer, and has a softer crumb despite being 60% rye — because gelatinised starch holds water that would otherwise be locked inside the bran.
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