Blog posts

I let nature take its course and instead of scoring the dough, I let the dough tear itself during oven spring- something like the Incredible Hulk's shirt. It saves me the shuffling around looking for my razor blade during that critical oven loading time, not scoring the dough saves me so many motions which- in my modis operandi- is performed like a magicians trick, sleight of hand style.

Ah November... for me, as a mom, this is the one time of year I start to dread all the sugared temper tantrums that are bound to become a regular thing now that the season of non-stop candy and sweets is upon us.

I still want something sweet, but I would rather see all the *sugar, sugar, sugar!* that the kids are bringing home get thrown out, so today I made Guilt-Free Hippie Cookies.

After my first cheese bread success at work (which in fact needed more cooking, but was a success anyway) I decided to get a chorizo bread now.

In this, my third bread, I made some adjustments:

• Increase the oven temp to 220ºC from 150ºC.
• Make sure I put salt! LOL.
• Experiment with steam to get a crust.
• Add more yeast to get more bubbles inside the bread and increase size.

Receipe:

taking into DA's advise finally been able to bake a loaf with a moist and soft crumb. Adding the soak water of long an and goji berries give this bread a sweetness tang. 

So, after my last try to make bread with an overnight retarded fermentation (which I REALLY want to succeed in because it will intensify the flavors of the bread enormously) I made a new attempt. With the help of dabrownman I discussed my last experiment of making a wheat bread with overnight fermentation. The wheat bread was a great success, taste wise, but I had problem with a very compact crumb.

 Last week, I got a nice private message from a TFL member who had just made and enjoyed the Sourdough Italian Bread about which I blogged back in 2008. That bread was Peter Reinhart's Italian bread from BBA with the biga converted to a biga naturale, AKA firm sourdough starter.

That message reminded me that in 2011 I developed another “Italian Bread” formula that I actually preferred to the 2008 version. Coincidentally, my Italian class classmates have been harassing encouraging me to bring some of my breads to class for them to sample.

This was my first addition experience.  I thought I would take a bit of risk and go for something savory.  I think this was so tasty!  I added 120g of toasted pecans and 105g of the Tillamok Sharp Cheddar.  I used 125G WW and 675g KA AP flour, 360g of my Levain.  The retard was 8 hours.

This is the Arkatena bread from Bread Matters by Andrew Whitley, except with rosemary instead of fennel, more salt, more heat, steam, an autolyse, some stretching and folding, and a shortcut using my own starter to create a chickpea starter.  The chickpea, aka garbanzo, aka gram flour is the unique feature of this bread.

 Last weekend I was lucky enough to journey back to one of my favorite states Vermont and visit King Arthur Flour as well as some other local attractions.  We enjoyed some great meals at the Norwich Inn and Simon Pearce Glass which blows their own glassware.