Benito's blog

My first bake this trip in Fort Lauderdale today was a success.  I was a bit worried taking some of my homemade miso (who knew it was so hard to find down here?) and starter across the border.

I am going to Fort Lauderdale for ten weeks and I’m bringing some of my starter with me to bake, but I’m also going to keep some starter in Toronto.  This is what I did to prepare my starter for a long hibernation.  I’m now down in Fort Lauderdale.

Another birthday get together this evening means another cake needing to be baked.  I had just enough cream cheese left over from the ginger breads so I decided to bake a popular southern US cake.  The Hummingbird cake has quite a few variations, but generally they all have bananas, pineapples and warm spices along with cream cheese icing as this one has.  Generally I don’t love a ton of icing on cakes, so I then to avoid layer cakes.  This one just has the drizzle icing on top.  Mine was a bit too thick so didn’t drip down the sides without some coaxing.

I am nearing the end of a batch of homemade red miso I harvested last May 2023.  Fortunately I have a full batch that has been fermenting for just over a year now so I decided to celebrate that with another bread using miso.  There rolls are delicious, soft, fluffy and super buttery, maybe not for those on a diet unless you do as I do and share most of the rolls with others.  The dough is a my standard formula that I use for sweet rolls with 15% whole wheat (or other whole grain) that is also the flour used for the tangzhong.

I wanted to do a slightly different sourdough focaccia using my homemade red miso.  This bread has both miso and toasted sesame seed oil in it.  I also used 10% whole kamut along with bread flour just for a bit more complexity.  The toppings I kept pretty simple a drizzle of red miso with olive oil, rings of red peppers, yellow cherry tomatoes, onions and black sesame seeds. 

A friend of mine has made these for us many years ago and I remember them fondly.  His homemade versions were far better than any of the store bought ones I’ve ever had.  I finally got around to trying to make these myself.  Although they’re called cakes, they are really pastries with a pineapple jam encased in a short crust wrapping.  I purchased a mooncake press/mold to shape these. I can do a better job with shaping these before pressing them as several of them had cracks after baking.  As typical of Asian desserts, these are not too sweet but tasty.

I felt like baking baguettes this week and decided to do something just a bit different, so I present sourdough baguette noir.  So the colour and flavour of these baguettes do not come from charcoal like baguette au charbon vegetal.  No the colour comes from ground toasted black sesame powder that is added to the well developed dough at the end of mixing. This brings an interesting colour to both the crust and the crumb.  The fat from the sesame seeds also cause the crumb to be softer and the crust to be thinner and super crisp compared to my usual SD baguettes.

I recently had a birthday and decided last minute to bake myself a cake since we were meeting friends for dinner.  I LOVE chocolate and remembered seeing this recipe by the awesome Stella Parks (BraveTart).  It turns out that this is a super easy super delicious cake that is actually vegan and almost flourless (no eggs or dairy).  Also what flour is in it is all whole wheat.  It is practically healthy especially for a cake.  The cake is super tender but I’m still shocked that something with such a simple ingredient list can bake into a cake.

This is my take on what is apparently a traditional Venezuelan Christmas bread that turns out to be super yummy.  As I said before, my various takes on Hokkaido SD milk bread prove to be so flexible.  I used my 35% WW version for this bake.  The dough gets rolled out and then ham, sliced green olives stuffed with pimentos and finally raisins and applied.  It is all rolled up into a cylinder and then eventually baked.  Did I say it is yummy, salty and a bit sweet from the raisins.

My first bake since returning home for us, although I made two, one is for a present.  We love seeds and nuts in bread so wanted to have a nutty bread.  I toasted the walnuts and also used toasted walnut oil in lieu of butter to maximize the nutty flavour.  I also last minute decided to top the loaves with black sesame seeds because why not!  I usually weigh the dough when I divide, this time I did not and obviously didn’t do a good job by eye LOL.