Benito's blog

Well a year and a half into my pie baking “career” I’ve finally made my first apple pie.  I know a lot of people love apple pie, but I hate peeling apples and have no space for a dedicated apple peeler in my apartment kitchen.  However, this apple pie turned out so well I might have to make room.

I followed the Bravetart Apple Pie recipe almost exactly and overall it turned out well.  I used once again the all butter crust recipe from Bravetart however, this time I subbed 40 g of the water for 40 g of vodka to see if it would make the pastry a touch more tender.

I am still working on my skills with sourdough, having had some recent success I thought I see if I can replicate that success.  With this bake I also thought I’d try shaping using a spritz of water on the counter and my hands, unfortunately that didn’t go so well.  I’m not sure why it didn’t work, perhaps I used too much water, that is the most likely cause.  After the shaping didn’t go well with water, I let the blob rest and then reshaped using flour, this went a bit better but not as good as my previous bake.

I’m sorry about posting another Beginner’s Sourdough loaf but I wanted to repeat it a few more times to see if I am getting any more consistent results.  I reduced the hydration by 20 gms when mixing to try to account for water added while doing coil folds etc.  I found that the dough was quite stiff despite a several hour autolyze, I think this was the reduced hydration unless I actually reduced by even more than I thought.  The lower hydration made slap and folds very hard.

Tonight’s dinner.  Again I used the Community Bake Recipe for sourdough pizza dough, thanks again to Danny and ThePieKing for the CB.

I have found that the dough is even better after a 72 hour cold fermentation and that the gluten hasn’t broken down at all.

Sourdough Pizza with balsamic olive oil marinated arugula and grape tomatoes with egg and avocados.

These are a tasty way to use up your sourdough starter discard.  Here’s the recipe.

This is my version of a “Sunburst” Bourbon Peach Melba Pie.

I know I’ve made this before but I wanted to see if my techniques have improved at all with more baking and for this dinner I wanted a simple sourdough without a lot of whole grain or other flavours added to the bread.

I baked the Seeded Sourdough recipe from The Perfect Loaf.  I didn’t get the oven spring that I should have because I tore the skin on the dough when I was pre-shaping.  I was having too much fun and did too much during pre-shaping, there was no need whatsoever to try to get it as perfectly round as I was doing.  Silly mistake.  Unfortunately that meant that when I unloaded the dough from the banneton, I kind of flattened more than it should have and of course, it didn’t get the rise it should have as well.

This sourdough has a lovely light orange crumb.  I modified the original recipe which was 100% white flour and instead used a combination of white bread, whole red fife and whole rye flours.  The tomato paste is complimented with rosemary and celery seeds, I couldn’t find nigella seeds so subbed celery seeds, but I think nigella would have been better.

311 g white bread flour

46 g whole wheat flour

21 g dark rye flour

2 tbsp freshly chopped rosemary leaves

3 g celery seeds

287 g warm water reserve 21 g for later

31 g tomato paste