Wednesday, June 13, 2007

Sourdough Bagels

Sourdough Bagels
Many thanks to Susanfnp for posting a great sourdough bagel recipe based on Nancy Silverton's bagel recipe. She also provided a number of key tips as I made these. I posted some photos process, as well as a spreadsheet with more details such as bakers percentages and preferment percentages.

Monday, June 4, 2007

Seawater Sourdough Wheat Bread

Seawater Sourdough Wheat Bread
Xma commented about trying seawater in bread on a diving trip. I decided to give this a try.
Please note: I have not researched health hazards that may result from using raw seawater directly in bread dough.
Based on some discussion on the internet, it seems that seawater has a salinity of approximately 32 to 35 parts per thousand. However, not all of the ions are Na+ or Cl-. In fact, seawater is a complex combination of various salts. However, as a naive assumption, I used 3.2% grams of salt per grams of water to approximate the saltiness of the seawater. One of the web sites indicated that the salinity in the Gulf of Maine, where I baked this bread aboard my sailboat, was 32 parts per thousand.