these are my first attempt at making English muffins and I must admit, I'm really really pleased with them. The recipe is from tartine by chad robertson.
For those of you who don't own that book, the recipe is a baguette dough that you flatten out on a baking sheet and then let rise like that, I used a 3 inch cookie cutter to cut them out, and then fried them in a little clarified butter for a couple of minutes on each side.
I had loads of starter left over from my loaf this weekend. I'm still getting used to how much starter I need to keep for the amount I bake. My 3 yr old daughter absolutely demolishes anything with chocolate or hazelnuts, or brioche, so i thought this was a good idea. Anybody who has children will not be surprised to learn, that despite the fact she adores every ingredient in these, they're definitely poison and she won't go near them, because I'm the worst person in the world.
Anyway, I made a fairly basic sourdough brioche recipe, and melted some dark chocolate,then mixed it with some hazelnuts I had lying around in the cupboard. It is lovely, especially the ones with slightly darker icing. I made that with vanilla extract instead of water.
This is today's bake. I got the recipe from sourdough by Sarah owens. It's a really good book if you haven't read it, the best thing about it is the fact that she provides loads of recipes to use leftover starter, so you don't have as much waste.
The only thing I changed about her recipe was, rather than making a levain with a tiny amount of starter, I just used starter I had fed the night before. I only did that because I have loads of starter that I am trying to use up, if anyone can tell me if there is a difference between just using that and making a levain, then please tell me. To be perfectly honest, it cut out about 10 hours of prep time out of the recipe because I could go straight into the bulk ferment so I could have bread the next day.
Anyway, it's a really nice bread. I'm going to try some toasted with a cup of tea in a few minutes.
This is my first attempt at sourdough. It's just a plain loaf proofed for about 20 hours in a round banneton, then adjusted a little bit to make a more rectangular shape. I was a little bit disappointed with the oven spring, but I think that was because I didn't leave my Dutch oven to heat up for long enough, Because i was getting a little impatient. Other than that I'm very happy with it.
Please let me know what you think, criticism more than welcome, also, would I be better buying a rectangular banneton, or is it fine to adjust the shape just before baking?
this was my attempt at fwsy white loaf with 80% biga. The taste and crumb are wonderful, I'm just so disappointed with the oven spring. The loaf on the left was proved in an ova, banneton and just flattened out horribly, the baguette in the middle was lovely so I ate most of that before I remembered to take pictures. The loaf on the right, I did in a round banneton. Apart from the rise on it I'm very happy. I will try again but because it's so wet, I may just continue with the white bread with poolish as my go to recipe.
like I said, no complaints about the bake apart from how slack the dough was so it didn't hold its shape, especially the monstrosity on the left.
This was my attempt at baguettes and barms . I used the basic white loaf with a poolish from fwsy. I know the baguettes don't look great, but I'm quite proud of them. I really need to get better at scoring my loaves. Other than that I love my new hobby.
