Isand66's blog

 I've been wanting to try the Ken Forkish style pizza dough ever since David Snyder on TFL posted about his great love for this formula and procedure here.  David changed some of the timing in the recipe to achieve the ultimate results.  I followed his directions pretty closely with the only thing I changed being I used my mixer on low speed for the initial mix and used some fresh milled white hard wheat flour in place of the WW he used.

  This bread uses a combination of fresh milled flour from my Nutrimill and store-bought flours.  The hard red wheat and hard white wheat were fresh milled.

I used some pecan meal I had bought during my trip to King Arthur Flour a few months ago in the starter which adds a nice nutty flavor to the final dough.  I also used some canned corn that I roasted under my broiler since corn on the cob is not in season in New York right now.

  I received a Nutrimill for a present from my wife last week....another new toy to play with!  I've ground fresh flour in small batches in my coffee grinder, but it is no comparison to using the Nutrimill.  I have yet to purchase any drum sieves to sift the flour and I definitely want to buy some bulk grains as soon as I can find a good source.

For my first attempt I used whatever I had on-hand which was Kamut, Hard Red Whole Wheat and Hard White Whole Wheat.  I used the Kamut to make the levain and also made a scald with some of the white whole wheat.

   This is an adaptation of my regular Durum Semolina bread with the main difference being the addition of Orange Shandy beer for the water and some dried orange peel.  The beer has a slight orange flavor undertone so I thought adding it to this formula with some orange peel would create a nice flavor combination and I was not wrong.  You can taste the hints of the orange beer and orange peel but it's not overpowering at all.  This bread is very tasty and is excellent for breakfast, lunch or dinner.

   These German style rolls were adapted from a recipe on Karin Hanseata's blog.  Her blog is filled with inspired baking so I urge you to visit and explore her adventures.

I found these rolls to by very similar to Kaiser style rolls with a nice hard crust and soft interior, perfect for sandwiches.

      This is another version of the bread I made last week but I subbed out the white rye with durum flour and I added some dried Shallots reconstituted in the liquid first.

All I can say is the smell of the shallots baking in this bread was amazing and filled the entire house with its oniony aroma.  The substitution of the durum changed the flavor profile slightly, and it was hard to really tell the difference without doing a side by side comparison.

I was trying to get into the holiday spirit so I asked my wife what type of bread she wanted me to make next and she immediately asked for a chocolate chip Challah with cherries.

I decided to use a sourdough starter and followed the Coconut Yeast Water Challah formula I had made last year which came out very nice.  This dough is very wet and does not really allow for braiding, so if you want to braid it you should cut down on the water even though the overall hydration is only 68% most of it comes from the egg yolks.

   This past weekend I decided to make 2 different styles of bread, with one being a classic Pain au Levain and the other a new higher percentage Jewish Rye.  I will post on the rye separately shortly.

I have made different versions of Pain au Levain in the past with moderate success so I wanted to change-up the flour a little and also add some barley flakes to hopefully add another layer of flavor.

For Thanksgiving we were visiting my wife's family in North Carolina as we always do and as usual we brought have our kitchen with us so we could bake for the main feast.

This year I made a double batch of my German Sourdough Pumpernickel Pretzel Rolls and another version of my Tangzhong Onion rolls.  I changed up some of the flour and also added some shredded cheese in the mix for added flavor.

I love baking with Durum flour and bake with it all the time, so I figured it was time to finally make a 100% Durum bread.  I have not used the 36 hour method in a while so I incorporated it into this bake and used some KAF Durum flour in the 2 stage starter and in the final dough.  Technically there is a little bit of AP flour in the seed starter but I hope you won't hold that against me.