ll433's blog

In Singapore roti prata is sold at just about every food centre, very cheaply available at about $1 a piece. I've loved these ever since I was a kid and it's something I have missed a lot since moving away.

Conceptually they are easy to make. White flour is mixed with salt and water, rested, then stretched somewhat acrobatically, oiled with ghee, folded into an envelope (or twisted and spiralled) and fried on a hot pan with more ghee.

I've done levain in stages to build flavour and gone up to 70% PFF in a previous rye loaf, so I thought why not try out a two-stage biga, go up to 80% PFF, and skip bulk fermentation since there should already be so much flavour?

This ended up being a 40% teff-rye loaf at 70% hydration. 

I felt like making my standard loaf yesterday but also felt like messing up processes that I have settled into for some time, just for the fun of it. 

These are 40% white rye rolls with a little crunchy hat on top of them. God, the hats are so delicious. I generally only have enough stomach capacity for a roll, max 1.5 rolls, but I just want to eat the hats of all the buns. I asked the husband if I could please peel the hat off his bun and he says, yes, but please don't eat it because it's the best part of the bun! Zzzzz

Yes, I could bake a tray of hats exclusively, but it's different when the hat is on a bun.

These loaves turned out surprisingly sweet and earthy. I used to make ground walnut loaves very frequently years ago - with some cocoa included as well - but the teff and rye here definitely contribute some complexity that I've never had with previous loaves.

Dry ingredients: 30% medium rye and 13% teff pre-fermented, 13% ground walnuts, 44% bread flour. Total hydration: 66%, be careful with over-hydrating because the ground walnuts don't really soak up much water.

Just back from Singapore and already craving savoury asian delights. Decided to a version of these pepper buns, which I first tried in Taipei. They make these in a huge charcoal oven on the streets, and the peppery filling paired with the flaky crust is unbelievable.

The traditional filling is meat-based, but here I decided to use a stewed mushroom filling. 

I had half a bag of fine cornmeal left in my pantry, and thought of making some corn bread. I consulted Ian's 2014 post on Broa de Milho before baking, and decided to use rye (10%), cornmeal (40%) and bread flour (50%).

A back to basics day with two simple bakes.

First - gluten free crunchy-outside-chewy-inside almond cookies that take 5 mins to mix and another 13 to bake.

To make 30 small cookies

This is an earthy, delicious and easy loaf to make. Flour composition is: 22% whole red spelt, 22% wholegrain, 20% whole barley, 16% whole teff and 20% white bread flour. Hydration is 75%.

I began the night before by making a biga with the 22% spelt and 22% wholegrain. The biga was 45% hydration and consisted of 10% of my standard rye starter. I left this to ferment for 15 hours at around 15 degrees.

When I still lived in Singapore I greatly enjoyed a specific soft swirl milk bread from a Japanese bakery. It had an amazingly delicious but soft, thick crust, and the crumb was very light, with some uneven holes, but had what I thought was depth of flavour - really the taste of wheat, rather than sugar or butter. This wasn't a typical fast fermented milk bread. I've been wanting to recreate it.