searched thru the forum and found some old threads talking bout coconut flour. was wondering if anyone has got a foolproof recipe for coconut flour? read on the web that it gives a really sticky, dry consistency. would like to bake a cake with the bag of coconut flour i got.
My better half has been craving a hamburger for a few weeks now. As the resident bread baker who can guarantee that the bread will not have dairy (allergic), it falls to me to make sure we have the proper buns. She told me that we could just use normal bread but no, that just won't due. Instead I returned to a recipe I've done a few times now as it always provides consistent results, can be made in a mixer, and is easy enough to sub in vegan butter and oat or soy-milk to avoid any dairy.
These rolls are super soft and fluffy thanks to the use of a tangzhong (precooked and gelatinous flour). They can easily be mixed in the morning and be ready for dinner. They are best served hot and fresh as they will become a little bit dry and more dense over time. This time I topped them with just a brush of butter and a sprinkle of everything bagel seasoning. I've also done the garlic butter topping and that is super amazing but it also makes me want to put the entire recipe in my mouth as quickly as possible.
If you want to see the steps narrated by Josh you can see the video here:
My results even with the substitutions of ingredients are basically identical. Mine are a bit more orange in color because of the local eggs I get which have a rich dark orange yolk instead of the more pale yellow that is common in America/Canada.
Sensei's Report Card
Tasting Notes: Soft and sweet. A perfect bread for dinner rolls or for a buger/hotdog if you want a soft bun. The variety of toppings can change the overall flavor profile of the bread and if you are making rolls the garlic butter flaky salt is highly recommended.
Time/Effort: Takes about 4 to 6 hours from start to finish as it is a yeasted bread that is risen twice and baked the same day. Low effort as it can be made completely in a stand mixer other than shaping.
Would I make it again: Well, given that I have made this recipe 3 or 4 times in the last year for burgers and rolls, yep this one will be made again without a doubt.
My attempt at Hamelman’s Hot Cross buns from his Bread book. I made these on previous Easter’s and they were always well received. One of the reasons I like his version is because the crossing paste is extra tasty. It is made with butter, sugar, egg, vanilla, lemon zest and flour. I am not going to post his recipe so buy the book. The recipe makes enough paste for four dozen buns and since I was only making two dozen and I didn’t have a smaller tip, I piped it on thick. The other thing that made these better this time was making my own candied orange peel and using the leftover orange flavored sugar water to brush on the buns after they come out of the oven. I usually buy candied fruit at the market but could not find it in any store and after making my own I will never buy them again.
Without further ado here are more Hot Cross Buns to throw on the pile. 
Happy Easter
hey guys, so i’ve been baking for about 2 years now and i’ve always gotten a good oven spring and ear (see below), but one day, i changed my oven (to a better one actually) and the ear disappeared, for good (see 2nd pic).
sad loaf, great oven spring given the height, but the ear has disappeared for good. I’ve always been baking with a stone, added steam, 230C. using the recipe from Maurizo, and have always been using it. Help? :(
adding on to this, after i cut the loaf, i suspect a serious problem of under fermentation haha.
I’ve been baking a lot of milk breads for some time developing the formula to the point that I’m quite happy with it. So now I’d like to see what I can do with a vegan version of a sourdough milk bread. This is my first try at a vegan version of a 100% whole wheat milk bread. My favourite non dairy milk is soy milk and I prefer the Asian soy milk rather than the North American ones as they are slightly sweetened without any added flavours like vanilla so it was easy to decide to use this. I have a bottle of toasted walnut oil that I use when I make bread with walnuts in it to amp up the walnut flavour so I decided that I would replace the oil from the butter and the egg yolk with the equivalent amount of toasted walnut oil. Finally for the egg yolks I decided to use ground flax seeds with water. I initially planned to use aquafaba (chickpea water) however, I realized when my first test dough wasn’t rising that the can of chickpeas I used had a good amount of salt added that I hadn’t accounted for in the dough. The high salt appeared to inhibit the microbes and there was very little rise over quite a long time so that first dough was binned.
Based on the information I could find 1 egg about 11% fat and the egg white is about equal to 1 tbsp of flax seeds ground and mixed with 2-3 tbsp of water.
Butter in North America is about 80% fat.
Instructions
Levain
Mix the levain ingredients in a jar or pyrex container with space for at least 300% growth.
Press down with your knuckles or silicone spatula to create a uniform surface and to push out air.
At a temperature of 78ºF, it typically takes up to 10-12 hours for this sweet stiff levain to be at peak. For my starter I typically see 3-3.5 times increase in size at peak. The levain will smell sweet with only a mild tang.
Tangzhong
Put about 1” of water sauce pan set on medium high heat. In the bowl of the stand mixer stir the milk and flour until blended. Then place the bowl on the sauce pan to cook the tangzhong (Bain Marie) for several minutes until well thickened, stirring regularly with a spoon or heat-resistant spatula. Theoretically it should reach 65ºC (149ºF) but I don’t find I need to measure the temperature as the tangzhong gelatinizes at this temperature. Let cool in the bowl and then refrigerate until the next morning.
Flax seed gel
Grind 1 tbsp of flax seeds and combine with 2-3 tbsp of water and stir to form a thick gel.
Cornstarch glaze
Combine ¼ tsp of corn starch and ¼ cup of water in a measuring cup and stir to dissolve. Microwave for 20-40 seconds in pulses until the cornstarch glaze thickens.
Dough
Into the bowl of a stand mixer with the tangzhong, add the soy milk (consider holding back 10 g of soy milk and adding later if this is the first time you’re making this), ground flax seed gel, salt, diastatic malt (optional) and levain. Mix and then break up the levain into many smaller pieces. Next add the flour. I like to use my spatula to mix until there aren’t many dry areas. Allow the flour to hydrate (fermentolyse) for 20-30 minutes. Mix on low speed and then medium speed until moderate gluten development this may take 5-10 mins. You may want to scrape the sides of the bowl during the first 5 minutes of mixing. Next drizzle in the toasted walnut oil a little at a time. Slow the mixer down to avoid splashing the oil at you. The dough may come apart, be patient, continue to mix until it comes together before drizzling in more oil. Once all the oil has been added and incorporated increase the speed gradually to medium. Mix at medium speed until the gluten is well developed, approximately 10 mins. You will want to check gluten development by windowpane during this time and stop mixing when you get a good windowpane. You should be able to pull a good windowpane, not quite as good as a white flour because the bran will interrupt the windowpane somewhat.
On the counter, shape the dough into a tight ball, cover in the bowl and ferment for 4-4.5 hours at 82ºF. There should be some rise visible at this stage.
You can next place the dough into the fridge to chill the dough for about 1.5 hours, this makes rolling the dough easier to shape. Remember, if you do so the final proof will take longer. Alternatively, you can do a cold retard in the fridge overnight, however, you may find that this increases the tang in your bread.
Prepare your pans by greasing them or line with parchment paper. I used a muffin pan oiled with walnut oil.
Lightly flour the top of the dough. Scrape the dough out onto a clean counter top and divide it into six. I like to weigh them to have equal sized bun. Shape each tightly into a boule, allow to rest 5 mins. Flatten each boule, divide it into three pieces shaping each into a small boule. Place each set of three small boules into the muffin tin to bake into a three lobed bun.
Cover and let proof for 3-5 hours at a warm temperature. I proof at 82°F. You will need longer than 3-5 hours if you chilled your dough for shaping. I proof until the top of the dough comes to within 1 cm of the top edge of the pan.
Preheat the oven to 350°F. Prepare your cornstarch glaze.
Bake 30-35 mins for rolls.
Apply cornstarch glaze when the bread is done, then place back in oven for just 1 minute.
One change I would make next time other than adjust the timing which wasn’t great (I shaped far too early because I had to get out of the house) is that I would slightly reduce the milk by 5% or so as the dough was difficult to shape due to stickiness. I wonder if the stickiness is in part from the flax seed gel used to replace the egg white. I’d be curious to try this again going with my initial plan for aquafaba, but using a no salt added can of chickpeas.
In the end, these were delicious and had a great amount of nutty flavour. It is impossible in my mind to replace the flavour from dairy fat, but these are delicious in their own way and much healthier using walnut oil, soy milk and flax seeds. Someone might ask why I didn’t use vegan butter, the ones I looked at often had unhealthy fats in them such as coconut oil so I figured if I was going to make a vegan version of a milk bread it should be healthier if I was going to skip the dairy.
This is the most massive oven spring I've ever gotten. How did the lid not get in the way!
Suspect have a starter issue, but not real sure. Starter is keep in fridge & fed daily from throw away if in bread making process. Otherwise, will feed/refresh fridge starter 1x/wk. Over last couple of months the starter has become very thick & doughy. Starter is made with 80% bread & 20% rye flours.
In preparation for bake days, will remove small amount of starter from fridge & feed it 1:1 couple times per day until ready to bake. Typically this process generates a nice airy starter, but lately it is very sluggish & doughy. Bread has been coming out, not flat, but not much spring. Crumb on all my breads is rather tight for lack of terms.
Sure, there are a lot of factors that have been left out here that could be adding to difficulty. Wanted to first figure out the starter & if there is an issue or I need to reboot.
Thanks
My new oven is quite big and because of my new baking stone that slightly bigger my oven door cannot closed almost as tight as it was (but not very open either) this is where I noticed that suddenly it became very hard for me to get an ear even though I have a great oven spring.
Recipe:
- Bread Flour (13%) 560gr
- WW Flour 140gr
- Water 560
- Cocoa Powder (Bloomed) 280gr
- Levain (miscalculate) 70gr
- Chocolate Chips 210gr
Process:
1. Autolyse All the flour and bloomed cocoa, withholding 5 % of water, for 1 hour
2. BF for 4+ hours
3. Preshape and Bench Rest for 25 minutes
4. Straight to the fridge 3C for 16 hours
5. Score
6. Baked in Gas oven 250C for 20 minutes with steam from lava rock and 20 minutes dry bake
and the result as you can see one has a small ear and on the other one it fused together
My hypothesis is that because of the dimension of the oven and the slight problem of the oven door the steam is not enough when I baked two loaves at a time.
Should I spritz them with some water to help create more steam or is it either useless or can create too much steam which invent new kinds of problem?
Incredibly soft and delicious. It's slightly sweet, slightly acidic and very gently bitter from things that I used to make it.
Grandma style, which means non measuring or using volume units. With some normal and some a little weird add ons: old flour scraped from board and dried, old oats and poppy seeds that fell off a previous loaf, some roasted grains of rye, barley and wheat, a big handful of rye altus, dried apricots, prunes and walnuts. Leavened with stiff rye preferment, while store bought whole wheat (I think it was Gold Medal) is in the dough
The procedure can be summarized as follows:
Stiff preferment: (2 cups rye, 2 tablespoons old starter, enough water to make a stiff dough) let ferment 12-16 hours at rt
Old scraps: dried bits and pieces scraped from the working board, burned flour from baking stone, also stuff that fell off of other loaves, like oats etc., kept dry in a jar; ground roasted grains , add lukewarm water and a pinch of starter, let ferment 12-16 hours at rt
Altus (large handful of dried rye bread cubes) let soak in water until very soft, then squeeze and add to the dough
Mix preferment, altus and fermented scraps together with their liquid, add 4 cups of whole wheat flour, regulate hydration to your liking. Autolyse 20-30 min, then salt to taste. Let ferment some time then add chopped fruit and nuts (I don't laminate, I just knead them into the dough) Proof until nice and puffy, place in banneton, wait until nicely expanded then bake
Hello,
I have been feeding my starter for around 2 weeks now. At around the 10 day mark, the starter began smelling like acetone/nail polish remover. I feed it everyday at the same time, and the smell goes away after feeding. The starter gets a lot of rise everyday, but I am afraid to use it. I successfully kept a starter going last summer as well for several months, and I never experienced this smell. I am doing nothing different. Saying this, I have two questions:
1. Is it safe to use this starter that has an acetone smell?
2. Is it possible to get rid of this smell? My thought is to start feeding it twice a day.
Any help would be greatly appreciated!
-Jonny
