Benito's blog

This was my second try baking this recipe from The Perfect Loaf.  The first bake was good especially the outward appearance but I felt that the crumb was a bit tight in places indicating that it was a bit underproofed.  This time I pushed the bulk fermentation another 30 mins and after final shaping left the dough in the banneton at room temperature for 30 minutes before putting it in the fridge.  I also increased the hydration to 84%.

I had another go at this bake, but made a few mistakes right at the start.  Rather than using the recommended 214 g of bread flour and 109 g of water for the final dough, I accidentally use 321 g bread flour and 243 g of water which I reduced to 236 from the total formula column, yikes.  Other changes I made include reducing the soaker water to 150 g.

I’ve been wanting to do a fruit and nut sourdough for sometime and decided my first bake of the year would be that time.  I’ve made raisin walnut commercially yeasted bread in the past so wanted to do something different, so chose cranberry walnut.  I started out thinking that would be follow Maurizio’s cranberry walnut sourdough recipe, but then got intimadated by his 88% hydration and also wanted to try lamination again.  So I sort os used his beginner sourdough recipe 78% hydration and added 10% dried cranberries and 10% lightly toasted walnuts.

I baked Maurizio’s sourdough Pain de Mie today.

Based on his recipe and recommendations I made a 700 g dough to fit in my 8.5” x 4.5” loaf pan, however, it came out rather small, I’d say it could easily have been 800 go for that size.

Anyhow, as per his recipe it is all white flour, 12% butter unsalted, 7% honey, 22% milk, 48% water, and 2% salt.

I’m feeling more confident now with this sourdough recipe.  I’ve had pretty good success now that I’ve baked it a few times with the hydration lowered to 74% from about 78%.  This is Maurizio’s beginner sourdough recipe which fortunately we love the flavour of.  The only change this time was that I added 0.5% diastatic malt powder to the dough during the autolyse.

I loved last weekend’s apple pie and needed to bake another dessert to go with dinner tonight with friends.  I decided to make this Cranberry Apple Bourbon Pie this weekend.  I tried to do a plaid lattice design to also do something different than I have tried before.  As I have been doing, I used Bravetart’s all butter crust again as it has become my favorite.

I am still lacking consistency bake to bake.  One reason is that I’m only baking sourdough every 2 weeks on average, but this week got another bake in.  I’ve still been trying Maurizio’s Beginner Sourdough as that was the first one I started with and wanted to gain some confidence baking it.  Two weeks ago I made an error and added way too much water and the dough lacked structure, it tasted fine but it was a bit on the pancake side of things.  This week I decided to hold back 20 g of water during autolyse, so rather than 78% hydration the bread would be 74%.

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.