A KAF Bread Flour Experiment Begins

Normally, I use Dakota Maid Bread Flour but for some reason, I went ahead and bought 5# of KAF BF to play with. So far, it seems like a nice bread flour but don't base your decision whether or or not to buy some on my say so. I bought the bag despite it costing over $5 at the local Kroger affiliate store.

My first loaf  was a sourdough with 25% white whole wheat and multi grain cereal soaker. I expected to see more of the soaked grains in the crumb but perhaps I should be doing that with a white bread formula.

Starter
130 g at 85% hydration,
fed with 75% organic AP/ 25% white whole wheat

Soaker
62 g 9 grain cereal mix
60 g water at room temperature

Main Dough
270 g KAF Bread Flour
90 g home milled white whole wheat
230 g water at 85F
All of starter
All of soaker
9 g kosher salt

It turned out to be nice loaf, with good flavor and crumb.

I had the opportunity to teach a class on bread baking for the Kansas Extension Service at our local library. While you might think you can cover a lot of material in an hour, I taught the class with no power point program or even using the video projector so I ended up clarifying a lot of times. One of the things I did do right was to bring in two loaves of basic white bread, both of which I had baked that morning. One was a straight dough and the other one was made with a poolish and an overnight proofing in the fridge. Fortunately for me, both loaves were good. The loaf made with the poolish really got a few of the basic points I had been teaching across to the class and the extension agent. It turned out to be such a good time, especially since I really hadn't taught a class in almost forty years, that I plan to work out a class in whole wheat breads to present as an idea at the next meeting of the Master Food Volunteers at the Extension Service office..

Basic White Bread
360 g bread flour
240 g water at 85F
7 g kosher salt
3 g active dry yeast

Modified White Bread Formula
Poolish
120 g bread flour
120 g water at 85F
1/8 tsp active dry yeast

Main Dough
240 g bread flour
120 g water at 85F
7 g kosher salt
1/4 tsp active dry yeast

Lots of visits to my obscure corner of the internet from the People's Republic of China and from Turkey. If someone from Turkey reads this and wants to share a few recipes or formulas for Turkish breads, please get in touch.

Comments, humor, and questions are welcome.