This week in the ledger · Log 023 · Ancient grains
Einkorn is the oldest wheat still in cultivation and the worst one for bread structure. Its gluten is weak and its bran is sharp, and at 30% it will tear if you look at it wrong. The dough must never be lifted off the bench — everything happens in the bowl, with a scraper, and the finished loaf is short and fat by necessity rather than by choice.
Read the log · 4 Oct 2026
Log 022 · 2 Oct 2026 · Discard and starter care
Three identical jars, three feeding ratios, three weeks on the same 4 °C shelf, then one bake-off. This entry is the result. It is the only test in the ledger I ran deliberately rather than as a side effect of baking, and it settled a question I had been guessing at for years: how long a starter can actually sit before it stops being usable, and which feeding ratio buys the most time.
Log 021 · 30 Sep 2026 · Rye
The Detmold method is a German system for building rye bread around a long, cool sour rather than around yeast. This is the simplified home version: 40% rye, a cold sour sponge built the night before at 20 °C for fourteen hours (per Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations), and dimpling instead of scoring. The result is a moist, deeply sour loaf with the irregular pocketed surface that German bakers call "porung".
Log 020 · 28 Sep 2026 · Enriched doughs
Shokupan is a milk bread so soft it tears into ribbons, and the hard part in a sourdough version is keeping the acidity from shouting over the milk. The fix has two parts: a yudane made from 40% of the flour weight scalded with boiling milk, and a starter used young, at hour six, when it is sweet rather than sour.
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