Benito's blog

Wanting to recover from my last two disasters of babka bakes and applying what I learned from them.  We do truly learn more from our disasters than our successes (thanks Dan).  I decided to try to use some Matcha powder I recently purchased and make a babka with a much drier filling that would avoid the pitfalls of soggy crumb.  I am adapting the same recipe for sourdough babka by Maurizio of theperfectloaf.com.  

In order to bring out much more miso flavour I used my red miso and increased it to 10%.

Total Flour 494 g 

Bread Flour 88.5% 437 g

Whole Wheat 11.5% 57 g all in levain 

Total Water 387.5 g 78.5% hydration 

Levain 115 g

Miso 49 g 10% 

Salt 7.5 g 

Overnight Levain build 1:6:6 

I’m closing the year out by baking these baguettes.  I spent a good part of the summer and into fall learning how to bake baguettes with a ton of help from Alan, Don, Doc and Danny and I’d like to thank them for helping me to learn how to make these.  I doubt I would even have tried had it not been for their prodding and the Community Bake.

The details of my formula are In this link.

I’ve posted a previous purple sweet potato sandwich loaf which was enriched with brown sugar and butter. I wanted to try making a loaf with the sweet potato but without the animal fat enrichment of the butter and using honey instead of brown sugar. So based on the formula that Maurizio posted on theperfectloaf.com I added mashed purple sweet potatoes to his formula and made adjustments to incorporate the sweet potato.

These are a traditional Christmas time dessert from Provence France.  They are a vegan brioche so rather than butter there is olive oil used instead.  This recipe was posted by Melissa over on Breadtopia and I followed her excellent formula.  I did make some changes.  I did not have ground anise so instead used Chinese Five Spice.  Also instead of just orange, I used a combination of Meyer Lemon and a smaller amount of orange.  Pompe å L’Huile recipe

Ingredients