What with spring cleaning, business at work, helping family move, my baking has been seriously curtailed the past month. This weekend, hopefully, I'll get a chance to spend a day puttering around the garden and baking a couple of batches of bread.

I've redirected my enthusiasm for good bread in another direction. I recently discovered Banh Mi, Vietnamese sandwiches. My office is in an area with a number of Vietnamese shops. I've tried the sandwiches in 5 or 6 different places now and totally fallen in love. The toppings are good, but for me the bread is what it is all about. Seriously, I don't think I've found better French bread in town as I've found at my favorite Banh Mi shop, a little hole-in-the-wall place next to a laundromat that always has a half dozen chain-smoking Vietnamese guys sitting out front. Two bucks a sandwich too: can't beat that.

Now that I'm looking for them, every day I'm discovering additional Banh Mi shops. Pho in the fall and winter, Banh Mi in the spring and summer. Vietnamese food is my new favorite cuisine.

I always wanted to test steaming a WW lean dough to see if it comes out as nice as the white enriched ones.

This is a WW steamed bun with some spicy homemade biltong (kangaroo) filling :). I think it'd do better if i added some...cake flour? ..will be softer. Nevertheless it was nice and chewy. :)

And this here is a Pane di Altamura, almost weighing 1kg from 100% durum wheat flour.

"My all time favorite is a blue cheese and walnut bread with 25% toasted waluts..." The Bread Baker's Apprentice, P. 234
Good place to start. This bread was/is truly amazing-- I more or less followed the proportions except I used the WW SD starter and added 25% WW flour to the final dough. Blue cheese was Stilton (Costco). Walnuts from Trader Joe's. This was some serious bread. Dinner was Lasagne coi Carciofi, Artichoke Lasagna...ooh baby...but thats another story. The walnut/stilton bread with salad was a perfect compliment to a great sunday dinner.

I am going to try linking to some pictures. Please be patient with me.

These are pictures of a starter I am experimenting with. See my earlier blog entry for an explanation.

Gordon

The control starter

Sourdough Jack's starter

Both starters for comparison

Friday night is often Pizza night in our house. This one is a favorite: Tuna Pizza

Basic Pizza dough (I used 1/2 cup SD starter but spiked it with 1/2 t of fast acting yeast, 2 cups flour, 1/2 t brown sugar, 1 t salt, 1 T olive oil)

Fresh mozarella (dried with paper towel then cubed then a quick whir in the food processor)
some basic tomato/oregano/garlic/basil sauce, about 1/3 cup
1 can quality imported solid tuna in olive oil (spanish or italian) flaked into uniform 1/2' pieces, not too small
1 can flat anchovies
2 T capers (rolled in paper towel to get rid of excess moisture)
10-12 strips roasted red pepper (rolled in paper towel to get rid of excess moisture)
1/2 cup pitted Kalamata (rolled in paper towel to get rid of excess moisture)

Notice a theme here...too much moisture is the enemy of good pizza, go easy on the sauce and dry wet ingredients where possible. In addition, I open the oven half way through baking and mop up excess moisture off the pizza by blotting the surface with paper towels. It is still a very juicy pizza but I avoid soggy bottom and side crust disasters!

Preheated 500 oven (rained last night, no outdoor grilling)

Building the pizza (and i believe in the hand form approach over the rolling pin) in this order: crust, cheese, tuna, anchovies,
sauce, red peppers, olives, capers.

Slide it onto the tiles:

12 minutes later, lets eat!