dabrownman's blog

Pizza is one the special favorites we make when my daughter brings her sorority sisters home from college for pizza night.  What they don't expect is a very thin crust that is sourdough, has whole wheat and garbanzo flour, sun dried tomatoes, fresh rosemary and garlic in it.  They also can't believe that they can make their own from a wide range of toppings, most of which are home made including spicy sauce -  and they can load it up with worrying that the crust will not be able to handle it.

This baby is loaded!!!  Lots of sauce, caramelized onions and mushrooms, roasted red green and spicy peppers, home made Italian sausage, pepperoni, Pecorino, Parm and Mozz cheeses, olives and a few other things hardly worth mentioning - except the fresh opal basil on top after the pie came out of the 500 degree oven.  The key is to pre bake the pie crust on a stone for 3 minutes before taking it out, quickly brushing on a thin coat of garlic oil before letting folks load up what ever they want  on top - before chucking the fatso back into the oven for 4 minutes or so to finish browning it off.

Before TFL came into my world, I had a multi grain, seeded, SD challah that I baked every week for my daily sandwich loaf. I called it my made up name Brachflachen Mehrere Vollkombrot. It was the standard; mix about 20 ingredients, kneed for 10 minutes let rise, punch down, let rise in the loaf pan, egg wash, slash and bake a 350 until 205 F. It took about 8 hours from start to finish - and I thought that was slow bread!! After finding out the slow bread was really 3 days - not 8 hours, I converted my old recipe to make it take nearly forever to make - instead of just a really long time :-) Now it is a 12 hour levain build, long S&F ferment, long retard and long after fridge rise bread. I really like the way it came out. Nice dark crispy, crunchy crust with Nijella and sesame seeds, soft, moist, small holed crumb with subtle SD taste that made great tasting toast too. It is still my favorite sandwich challah loaf .

The second shot of the crub says a lot about me and my foodie nature.  Home made; challah, dijon mustard, pickles, cheese, meat and home grown; lettuce and tomatoes.

The 3rd shot means it is home made Aranchello, Minneochello and Limochello time too !!!!!

My first attempt at making SD using S&F, long retard and David's parchment paper technique.  The only change I made was using 50 g of home ground WW berries instead of the rye that David used.  No rye to be found anywhere.  I also used a WW, and AP flour build for the levain.  I'm not sure what David's was but I am guessing he had some rye in it.  I was very happy with the  results.  Nice exterior crust, great open crumb and fine taste.  It was better the next day too.  I liked it with oiive oil, fresh basil, pecorino, parm and pepper.  On Davids's blog you see my ordeal trying to bake the San Joaquin.  He said my saga proves his recipe is bullet proof :-)  It is bullet proof too!   There is also a photo of my second recipe of my home made Puff Paste Blueberry Cream Cheese Braid inspired by the one on TFL with bread instead of puff paste.  What a great site for bakers like me!!!