Benito's blog

I really find that it is easy to get rusty when you don’t make baguettes regularly.  The dough knows when you are anxious and fearful when it comes to preshaping and shaping.  You must not feel fear.

This is an increase in hydration from the previous bake of this same recipe that was posted by Martin Philips of KA. I didn’t use IDY either time because my levain is so active I cannot imagine making it go even faster.

This is the third time I’ve bake this formula I first put together for the semolina CB.  I hadn’t baked it since that time and wanted to try it out again.  I finally received my new pH meter, the Hanna bread and dough model and used it for the first time for this bake.  I’ll know how it worked out when I finally slice this open, I will say I was surprised at how little a rise in the aliquot jar corresponded with the pH readings at which other well known bakers follow.  Now of course, pH will vary greatly based on the hydration and flour composition of the dough.

I saw a post that Maurizio made on his IG feed about basil pesto knots that he made, this was my inspiration for these sun dried pesto knots.  I used his recipe for the dough, although I had to decrease the hydration because his hydrations are always higher than I can do for my flours and conditions especially now that the high humidity is back in Toronto.  Also, as I have been doing lately, I am developing all my dough, even the enriched ones by hand rather than using the stand mixer in order to extend the life of my KA mixer.

So I still do not have my new pH meter but I’m calibrating my old cheap one now since I have the pH solution.  Based on my last bake I know that I have been way overproofing in recent weeks while trying to push fermentation and have allowed the pH to get too low resulting in proteolysis.  I measured rise by aliquot jar and any comments on rise refer to the aliquot jar not actual main dough rise.  So as not to damage the aliquot jar dough or the main dough, I create a second aliquot jar that I use to measure the pH from.  The dough started with a pH of around 5.74.

For this bake of my usual country sourdough I wanted to see how well the aliquot jar correlates with pH readings.  I have usually been shaping when the aliquot jar shows a 60% rise and now trying to push bulk wanted to cold retard when the rise is 110%.  This might be a bit overproofed but we’ll see.  From what I’ve seen shared from other bakers, they are shaping when pH reaches 4.4 and baking when pH is 4.1.

I haven’t made a pizza in ages and had a hankering for sourdough pizza.  I’m made minor changes to how I ferment my sourdough pizza dough, I’ve realized that my pizza dough in the past had been underfermented.

I’ve had my eye on this method of shaping a milk bread for sometime when I first saw this on my IG feed.  This bake is inspired by Chiew See of Autumn Kitchen, she used a similar method of shaping a matcha milk bread last summer and I’ve wanted to try it ever since and finally got around to doing it this long weekend. 

I won’t bother posting the formula as it is the same as previously posted.  For this loaf I added toasted black sesame, pumpkin and sunflower seeds during lamination.  Bulk went to  60% rise in the aliquot jar and then final bench warm proof to 110% at which time it went into the fridge for a cold retard.  Based on the slight spreading that this loaf had either it is a bit overproofed or over hydrated.

Miso nori sourdough 77% hydration 20% whole red fife.  For this bake I really pushed fermentation using the aliquot jar I shaped at a 60% rise then ended final proof at 110%. A quick 20 minutes in the freezer while the oven preheated and baked. One mistake I made was that I forgot to turn the oven down to 450ºF after I loaded the dough. I didn’t catch my mistake until 12 mins into baking. Now the miso already makes the crust darker but some amount of the colour is also that high bake temperature.

Recently I changed from Robin Hood Bread flour to Anita’s Organic All Purpose flour.  I did a flour stress test and found that Anita’s is more extensible than Robin Hood, however, I’ve discovered in my past couple of bakes that it cannot absorb as much water.  In this bake I’ve reduced the hydration of this formula from 80 to 76%.  I did a bake of this formula that came out flat.  At first I thought it was over proofed, since I’ve been pushing proofing, but when I sliced it open it showed no signs of overproofing so my feeling is that it was over hydrated.