Red Currants are one of the best things in life! I love their sweet and tart bites of juiciness. The season is incredibly short though, and to prolong the season, the one of the things that my family often does is make jelly. My mom made a whole bunch last week, and with some jelly, I made some Hazelnut Red Currant Linzer Cookies. Bite sized cookies with a great flavor!
As I have mentioned before, I am spending some time re-creating my “usual” yeasted recipes into sourdough recipes. This particular bread, Sourdough Cranberry Walnut Artisan Breakfast Bread, has actually worked out very well with the sourdough starter. It took me a little bit to get the baker’s ratio right, but once I’ve gotten the hydration level right, it’s been a breeze. It’s also one of my most popular varieties of bread in general. 🙂
I decided to play a little bit with some different flours. In this case, it is still a wheat flour, but a different variety, an “older” style called einkorn, in this case, all-purpose einkorn (whole wheat einkorn is also available). The first thing that I noticed is that the flour itself is slightly yellower. It is also a bit finer, almost like cake flour feeling. I wasn’t sure of the ability of the flour to create a good internal structure, so I did add a bit of bread flour. The flour also smelled wheatier, which seemed promising. Now, the dough was spectacular — very smooth and had a soft, malleable feel, and Alice was particularly active and I got a great rise. The slightly disappointing thing is that I didn’t get great lift in the actual loaf as you can see from the pictures. It is soft, has great chew and the crust is phenomenal. The flavor is great too. I’ll just have to work on getting an airier interior. That said, the loaf *looks* amazing and I can definitely see why bread art is a thing!