Bread

Discover the Magic of Home Milling this Saturday

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Bread, Events, Food
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In my opinion, way, way too many home bakers don’t know about the benefits of milling your own flour. If you’re in LA this weekend and are interested in getting more intimate with your flour, there’s a fun event at the King’s Roost featuring Paul LeBeau, who will be debuting a revolutionary new home grain mill called the MockMill. The MockMill attaches to your Kitchen Aid and is considerably less expensive than other home mills. Please come, if just to taste what bread made from freshly mixed four tastes like. I’ll be interviewing Paul for the podcast live in front of an audience. Plus you’ll have a chance to meet Guy Frenkel, the baking genius behind this Instagram account. Here’s the 411:

Home Grain Milling Raffle, Meet and Greet at The King’s Roost

Southern California Farmers, Millers and Bakers are meeting up in Silverlake to learn about home grain milling with Paul LeBeau, Managing director of the German mill maker, Wolfgang Mock. We are raffling 2 MockMills along with various locally grown whole grains donated by California farmers. While there is no charge for raffle tickets or the event, we will sell raffle tickets for a third mill and grain basket to benefit the California Grain Campaign, the effort to require 20% of farmers market baked goods to be made with local whole grains by the year 2020.

When and Where:

Saturday, January 28 th , 2-5pm
The King’s Roost
3732 Sunset Blvd, LA, CA 90026
www.kingsroost.com

Organizers:
Guy Frenkel of Ceor Bread, Erik Knutzen of Root Simple, Leyna Lightman, and Roe Sie

Who
Local farmers, millers, and bakers will be there to meet with Paul LeBeau. Paul is the managing director of German based home mill manufacturing company Wolfgang Mock. They have designed an affordable, compact, stone mill attachment for the Kitchen-Aid and, like Roe Sie, the owner of The King’s Roost, they believe that every home should have a grain mill.

Why
To share the benefits of milling fresh flour at home. Benefits like making fresher healthier more nutritious foods for less money, while supporting the local economy, increasing food security and decreasing our impact on the environment.

Where
The King’s Roost in Silver Lake is LA’s first and only urban homesteading store and learning center. We believe it is the only brick and mortar store in the country that carries a full line of home grain mills. We provide classes and supplies not just for milling and baking, but also for chicken keeping, bee keeping, soap and candle making, brewing, fermenting, and aquaponics.

For more information contact: Roe Sie at [email protected]

Learn to Bake Your Own Bread! Fall Classes With Dana Morgan and Linda Preuss

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Bread, Events, Food
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Tired of crappy supermarket bread? Don’t like paying $10 for a loaf of decent bread? How about learning to bake your own bread? I can’t think of any better teachers than my friends Dana Morgan and Linda Preuss. They have three classes coming up:

October 22
Tartine-Style Sourdough—30% Whole Grain

November 12
100% Whole Grain Breads—Blending Varietal Grains

December 10
Baking with Spelt—100% Spelt Breads

If that’s not enough incentive, each class breaks for a pizza lunch baked in the Westchester Community Oven at Holy Nativity Episcopal Church.

Sign up for the classes through the Los Angeles Bread Baker’s Meetup. The classes take place at 10:45-3:00pm with a break for the pizza lunch at 12:00pm.

Cost: $65.00/class. Free banneton for shaping bread ($15 value) if you sign up for 2 of the classes. Class size is limited to 14 bakers so sign up soon!

Josey Baker whole / wild / wet / slow / bold

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Bread, Food
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The bread nerd club I co-founded, the Los Angeles Bread Bakers, brought Josey Baker down to LA to teach a class. Now you can watch a version that very same class via Youtube for freeeeeee. I’m a huge fan of his method and his book Josey Baker Bread. If you’re interested in making your own bread skip the Netflix tonight and get whole, wild, wet, slow and bold.

Sourdough Baking Class July 9th

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Bread, Events, Food
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Just dig that beautiful loaf. Want to learn how to bake it yourself? The very talented Dana Morgan is teaching a basic Tartine style baking class on July 9th in Westchester. There’s also a pizza bake taking place the same day at the new community oven.

For more info sign up for the Los Angeles Bread Bakers if you haven’t already, and head to the event listing for this class. Space is limited so sign up soon.

Baking Bread with Specialty Malts

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Beer, Bread, Food
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I used to make my own beer. But after three ruined batches and not wanting to add to a growing middle-aged paunch, I decided to give away the  equipment. One thing I miss is not being able to make bread with the leftover grains.

That is, until I tried a recipe from Emmanuel Hadjiandreou’s book How to Make Sourdough. Hadjiandreou, a specialist in Northern European breads, taught me that you can skip the beer making and just use malted grains directly in your bread.

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The grains used in making beer are, mostly, barley that has been malted (sprouted) and then either caramelized or roasted. To make beer you soak the grains in warm water to extract the sugars that form in the malting process. Fermenting that sugary malt water creates alcohol. Most of the grain used to make beer is two or six-row malt. You add so-called “specialty” grains (that have been caramelized or roasted) to add flavor. If you skip the beer making and add the specialty malts directly to your dough, more of their flavor makes it into the bread.

Step into a homebrew shop and you’ll find bin after bin of different specialty grains. I decided, with Hadjiandreou’s advice to start with three: a crystal malt (I used a caramel 120), a plain malt (such as Maris Otter) and an American chocolate malt. But you don’t need to use these exact grains. Stick your head in the grain bins and let your nose lead you.

In a 2-pound sourdough rye loaf Hadjiandreou’s recipe calls for 20 grams of chocolate malt and 40 grams each of the other two grains. A lighter hand with the dark malts will reduce the chance of bitter bread.

To soak or not to soak
Usually when I add whole grains or seeds to bread I like to soak them for a few hours in hot water. But when I tried this with the specialty grains I ended up inadvertently starting the beer making process. Much of the syrupy goodness flowed out the grain and was lost when I had to drain it prior to adding it to my dough. Instead, I got better results by starting with a wet dough and letting the grain soften during a very long bulk fermentation and proof. An important last step was to put a bowl over the loaf after it came out of the oven to lock in the moisture. I would never do this with most kinds of bread, but this style of dense German/Scandinavian bread really benefits from a wet post-bake sauna. In addition to further softening the specialty grain it also softens the crust.

While I may no longer make beer, I can still make what I like to call “solid” beer: a.k.a. bread. And with the many varieties of specialty grain, a whole world of flavor awaits.

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