When I started making bread I was so unsure of the results that I was making bread for a single breakfast, basically with 160-180g of flour. After I became more confident I increased slightly and went to double, but baking with yeast, the bread had a hard time keeping fresh in the Japanese weather: too dry in winter and too humid almost all the rest of the time. So my basic flour amount stayed around 300g for a loaf most of the time, unless we had guests and the bread would go in no time. But I felt it was such a waste of time and energy. Kneading 300g or 500g of flour is not much different, and heating the oven once is so much more energy efficient.
Since I’ve baked with my sourdough Lois, as I was experimenting I went down to smaller loafs again for a bit, and increasing their size little by little, I also got rid of the scale. I do everything using my feeling, learning to understand how the dough is rather than trusting the scale always. Indeed, I feed my sourdough also without a scale, more than often I keep rather hard but when I want to wash its home I then liquify it to move it before making it hard again when moving in again. And with the weather changing really quickly, the scale was no good to tell me how much hydrated should be the dough, but my hands are rather good. It also helps when working with different kind of flours, like I do.
What I am targeting is a large loaf that can make 3 breakfasts and eventually a few extra slices for tea-time, for this I use the equivalent of 500g or slightly more of flour, which happens to be perfect to use a large part of my sourdough before it becomes too voluminous!!!
My all-time favorite is definitely campagne bread using about 20% of whole wheat flour or of buckwheat flour. The others that I love baking are the boxed whole wheat bread with nuts, seeds and dry fruits, I love the shape of its slices and the patterns the fruits etc… create in it. or the naturally very sweet whole wheat and chestnut flour bread. While chestnut flour contains no gluten you obtain a denser crumb but all the same delicious.
What is your favorite bread recipe?
