A gift from my Australian friends!

I recently received a very nice gift from Maedi & Graham at Companion Bakery in Oatlands, Tasmania Australia! They sent me two 1 k bags of Light Sifted Wheat Flour and a 1 k bag of Organic Spelt Flour. Both were stone ground at Callington Mill which is just across the road from the bakery. The flour was ground from Tasmanian grown grains. They also sent a nice German made banneton and a sample of their starter used at Companion Bakery! Thank you so much Maedi and Graham!

I’m typically a weekend baker so I went about getting the starter up and going so I could use it the first weekend I had a chance to bake. It only took a couple of days to get the starter up and going. Not wanting to use up my imported flour for the feeding I used King Arthur’s White Whole Wheat as a substitute.

For my first attempt I chose to try the Light Sifted Wheat Flour. The recipe I used was provided by Graham with the starter. I reduced the amounts to1/3 of the original recipe to make 1 small loaf but kept the percentages the same.
333g Flour 100%
200g Water 60%
133g 100% Starter 40%
7g Sea salt 1.8%

The flour produced very nice silky dough that was very easy to work with and had a nice aroma.

After mixing the ingredients until just mixed, I allowed the dough to autolyse for 30 minutes. I initially bulk proofed the dough for 3 hours folding once at 1.5 hours. At the end of the 3 hours I felt the dough needed more structure and proofed for another 2 hours folding every half hour. I might not have had to go as long if I would have folded the dough more often during the first three hours. At any rate, the final dough had great gluten structure.

Next I formed my loaf and placed it in my new banneton I covered it and allowed it to set for 30 minutes. Then I placed the dough in the refrigerator overnight (approximately 8 hours).
 
The next morning the dough had a final proof at room temperature for 1.5 hours. I baked the bread using the roasting pan method (developed by Teresa at Northwest Sourdough.com) at 425°F. I suspect I could have allowed the dough to final proof a little longer because the loaf had a fairly aggressive spring in the oven.

Over all I was very pleased! The result was fantastic looking and tasting bread! I highly recommend the flour & starter to anyone that can get their hands on some(see Companion Bakery link below). I really like the starter. In comparison to my own home grown starter I think Graham’s starter allows for longer fermentation time which I think leads to more flavor. I’ll have to try the starter with my usual King Arthur bread flour to see if it reacts the same with it.

Fantastic gift!

Starter ready to go

After forming.

Ready for the oven!

Cooling!

Nice Crumb & great tasting!

I also can’t wait to try the spelt flour. I think I’ll try it alone and in a mix with the light sifted flour. Watch for future updates of the results.

I want to say again a very big thank you to Graham & Maedi for their generosity!
Please follow the links below for more on Companion Bakery and Callington Mill.

http://companionbakery.com.au/
http://www.abc.net.au/tv/pohskitchen/stories/s3299291.htm
http://callingtonmill.com.au/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vty8Yr6Fzpg&list=LLNM-JVW2uhd-dgQMFB2zKyw