This is my second bake of this bread in the last few days. I had made a batch of dough to go with my wife's football party eggplant parmesan and chicken parmesan with homemade sauce, meatballs and sausage. She also had made some fresh croissants with chocolate inside and all I was going to do was make some bread.
I just returned from my latest trip to China for work and was itching to have some decent bread to eat. China is not known for their bread so I was starting to suffer bread withdrawal.
My starter is in serious need of some tender loving care after sleeping in the refrigerator for a couple of weeks so I had no choice but to make a yeasted dough.
I used a good portion of First Clear flour along with durum, white whole wheat (to get a little healthy grains in there), bread flour and some potato flour.
Ever since I read about this bread baked by Varda (recipe here) I have wanted to try to bake one. I managed to pick up what I thought was Chocolate Malted Rye which is one of the key ingredients at a local brewers supply store. Unfortunately I later learned that what I bought was chocolate malted barley. Never the less I still figured it was worth giving it a go anyway.
I have made sourdough rolls using the Tangzhong method before and they usually come out great. I decide to change it up a bit and used buttermilk instead of cream or milk and added some sour cream for an added flavor boost. I also added some fresh parmesan cheese and used rolled oats, white rye and spelt flour to try to make it a little healthy.
I have to say when these were baking the whole house smelled amazing.
I wanted to make a fairly uncomplicated bread with a good portion of spelt flour and while I was at it I decided to add some walnuts since I love nuts and my new apprentice Max is quite the nut as well.
My wife picked up some chocolate infused olive oil on close-out at William Sonoma so I figured that along with some chocolate vinegar would be a good compliment to the mix of nutty flours along with the walnuts. I'm not sure you really end up tasting too much chocolate flavor but it did add some nice chocolate undertones to the final bread.
This bread was inspired by my friend and fellow TFL member, Khalid. His beautiful bread was a 100% whole wheat version using yeast while for my version I chose to convert the recipe to sourdough and used three different whole grain flours instead of one.
I decided to use my trusty Krups coffee grinder to make fresh ground flour for the entire recipe and I was quite happy with the results.
I used a 2 step build for the starter mixing Einkorn Ancient Whole Wheat with a Hard White Whole Wheat.
It's been a few weeks since my last post. I've been very busy, traveling to Costa Rica on vacation which was amazing and upon my return we added another family member to our pack. I am happy to introduce Max who is our new 9 month mixed breed puppy.
This was supposed to be a 36 hour sourdough but I got stuck in my favorite airport O'Hare for about 4 hours longer than expected and didn't get home until 1:30 AM. Due to the extra hours in the refrigerator and the blueberry beer I used this one ended up real sour.
I wanted to make a mostly whole grain bread and this one came in at around 72%. I used freshly ground flour for the levain and for the main dough I added some First Clear for some gluten strength and Durum because it's one of my favorite flours.
My wife made some Sangria for the 4th of July and had a ton of fresh blueberries and raspberries left over so I decided to use some of them up. My fellow baking friend Evon inspired this bake with her use of blue berries, cherries and cranberries in her recent sourdough breads.
We bought some chicken Buffalo style sliders the other day so I wanted to make some tasty buns to go with them. The buns needed to be hearty enough to hold the burgers and the fixings as well as soft enough like a hamburger bun needs to be.
I adapted a recipe from KAF and made several changes including the flour types and changes and additions in several ingredients. I added some dried onions and some Parmesan powder to give it a little extra flavor and just enough honey to round out the flavor profile.
