Benito's blog

This is set number 15 of my baguette trials and tribulations and in some ways one of the most successful baguette bakes I’ve had where I figured something out that has turned out to be critical to my baguettes.  I have been stumped by the lack of ears and grigne on my baguettes, but happy with the crumb.  Well in this bake I reduced bulk fermentation aiming for only a 25% rise in bulk and then eliminated bench room temperature proofing of the shaped dough instead putting the baguettes into the fridge after final shaping.

I first started baking pies about two and a half years ago, I’ve gone through a pile of different pasty recipes until I tried Stella Parks recipe in Bravetart cookbook.  I’ve mentioned this one before, but if you haven’t tried it you really need to.  It is the easiest to make, the one challenge for us bread bakers is not to knead.  Once I have a dough in my hands I automatically want to knead it, with pastry you really shouldn’t knead it.  In fact, I barely bring this together.

OK still on a miso kick, not my homemade as that will take sometime yet, but red miso again.  I was happy with my previous bake of miso with furikake, but decided to change it up just a bit by adding toasted black and white sesame seeds.  Since I love sesame seeds and have baked a previous black and white sesame seed bread I thought that it would be great with the flavour of miso.

Bread flour 352 g

Sprouted Whole Wheat 97 g

Water 320 g

Levain 115 g 100% hydration Sprouted whole wheat 

After my go at the Red Miso Furikake Sourdough bake, Cedarmountain gave me the idea to make my own miso.  I actually use a lot of miso in my cooking and now I’m also gradually using it in my baking.  So why not make my own miso?  The first hurdle was to source koji rice.  I was able to find some here in Toronto as we have a local sake producer called Izumi and they sold me some koji rice.  Well the ingredient list for a simple miso is even shorter than bread, Koji rice, soy beans, salt and water.  OK perhaps it is the same as for bread.

I’ve been participating the baguette CB and realized that I hadn’t documented any of the baguette bakes in my blog.  I find it can be nice to go back and see how my baking has progressed with its various ups and downs.

The formula I’ve settled on to hone my baguette craft with is Abel’s Baguette au Levain.  This is the formula I’ve been following.

For three baguettes about 280 g (to account for aliquot jar)

I usually would use peaches this year because the local Ontario peaches are awesome but you have to peel them. Nectarines don’t need to be peeled so that’s why they are in my galette. This is my first galette although I have baked many a pie. I used my go to pie pastry recipe by Bravetart. If you’re not familiar with it the recipe is in her awesome books  I love that it has the delicious flavour is butter and no transfats that shortening pastry would have.

Cedarmountain here on TFL got me interested in making miso after he replied to my blog post about my red miso furikake sourdough.  One major ingredient needed to make miso paste from scratch so I learned from him was koji rice.  From Tartine Book No. 3 “Koji is the traditional Japanese food culture of rice inoculated with Aspergillus oryzae mold.

This is a 25% whole red fife sourdough I baked today.  I made a double batch so I could give one away, unfortunately I think I’ve overproofed these, live and learn.

For two loaves 890 g 

748 g bread flour 75%

160 g whole red fife (total 252 g with the levain) 25%

688 g water gives 78% hydration - add levain and salt without reserved water

4.5 diastatic malt

18 g salt

184 g levain 1:2:2 starter 40 g, 80 g whole red fife 80 g water

This is my first attempt with this formula I’ve put together for a Japanese inspired sourdough using red miso paste and furikake.  Furikake for those unfamiliar with it is a seasoning blend that can vary that Japanese often use to top their steamed rice.  This particular one has nori flakes, bonito and sesame seeds as the primary ingredient.  I’ve based this on Kristen’s basic sourdough recipe.

Total Dough Weight 900 g

Total Flour 494 g 

Bread Flour 80%

Whole Wheat 20%

I baked a sourdough loaf using Kamut for the first time.  It wasn’t the easiest thing to find here in Toronto, but I recently came upon a new organic market that carries Kamut grown in Canada.  The colour the whole grain flour is a lovely butter like yellow.

This is a 20% Kamut, 80% strong white flour.  9% pre-fermented flour.