Aaron Lewis

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since Sep 06, 2018
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Recent posts by Aaron Lewis

I have a Komo mill, and find that I can produce very good bread from its flour; however, I use organic hard wheat. I make a sourdough - yeasted whole wheat needs added sugar, fat, and likely some white flour to make a good bread.
For sourdough, I use an autolyze. I have a good sourdough starter and I build it into an active levain with refreshment. My active levain is about 20% of the flour in the loaf. My hydration is ~80%. I do stretch and folds.
I use long fermentation at ~75F
I do coil folds.
I use retard.
I use a very good baking stone.
3 years ago
Some commercial "whole wheat" flours mill the grain into streams and then recombine the streams to make their whole wheat flour. Some mill divert part of the more valuable streams (e.g., wheat germ) for sale at a higher price - so some whole wheat flours do not have same nutrition as flour ground at home.
Flour ground at home is fresher.

High protein wheat is hard when dry. Most high quality high protein wheat is sold at moisture content of 10% to 12%. It is much easer to grind when the moisture is closer to 14%.  I add 2% water, and mix and let set and mix for a few days to "temper" the grain. Do not be careless. If moisture gets up to 16% it will likely clog the grinder! The 14% moisture grain will not keep for very long.
I had a Vitamix with the dry blending attachment, and I moved on to a Komo mill.

I bake twice a week and after trying all kinds of make-shift  and cheap bake stones and Dutch ovens, I have settled on a Fibrament baking stone (in an electric oven) as being faster, easier, and producing a broader range of baked products of better quality.

Whole wheat sourdough bread baked at home on a good baking stone can be as good  as any bread, any where,  any time. It brings new meaning to "bread is the staff of life".


3 years ago
About 20 years ago, my wife bought me a nice hand-knit fisherman's sweater. I wore it salmon fishing here in the Bay Area, and  about froze. So I learned to hand-knit fabrics that would keep a fisherman warm in the North Atlantic. Then, I needed better yarn, so I learned to spin. I like 5-ply yarns, so I learned to spin fast. A recap of my approach to production spinning is at: https://gansey.blogspot.com/.
6 years ago