loydb's blog

Today was the final stretch before heading to the in-laws for Christmas. I spent pretty much the whole day in the kitchen, minus a trip to the grocery store. The takeaway:

These were tasty, I enjoyed the chewy butterscotch and chocolate. I have to agree that I liked them just as much without any chocolate at all. I think if I were to do it again, I'd get some orange-infused bittersweet chocolate for them - my 66% bittersweet/33% milk choc. was too sweet IMO -- I liked the Mohn bars better.

Baking Notes:

I used to have a problem with my crackers, but then I took an arrow to the knee...

For the last month or so, I've been turning all my extra sourdough starter into crackers. With a couple of exceptions, they've been disappointing: not crisp enough, too crisp and burnt, no flavor, too much salt, etc. etc. That all changed a couple of days ago, mostly by accident. I've since successfuly reproduced the recipe three times, and may have it down now.

This went badly, badly wrong. Yes, that's how it came out of the oven.

They can't all be home runs...

I'm revisiting my Pulled Pork Sourdough Pizza. I toned down the heat a bit -- I still used habenero bbq sauce when I pre-heated the pork, but use a sweeter sauce on the actual dough. And instead of serranos, I used jalapenos for the pico. It still had a kick to it, but didn't leave my wife in tears...

It's kickoff week for the Inside the Jewish Bakery Challenge - Semester 1. We're starting off with Mohn bars.

The bars are made up of three sub-recipes: 1-2-3 dough, a poppyseed filling, and streusel on the top. I used KA bread flour instead of home milled this time.

Baking notes:

My last chocolate experiment was a bit (allright, a large bit) too sweet. This time, I eliminated the extra butter, brown sugar, and maple syrup, and went with 2 oz of bittersweet choc chips and 2 oz of milk choc chips. I added 5 oz of dried cherries and 4 oz of pecans. I also used 100% home-milled flour (mix of hard red and white wheat) and the sourdo.com Russian starter. After an initial 4 hour proof, I shaped and put in a pullman pan.

I don't know about you guys, but last week wore me out. I'm just now recovering and have the energy to recap :)

Here's the last week or so of production. The struan I kept, everything else went on Thursday.

I had a *bunch* of extra rye starter after feeding this time, so I made a mostly-starter batch of sunflower and pumpkin seed rye inspired by PR's in BBA. I only added about 1.5 cups of hard red and white whole wheat total, the rest was 100% rye starter.

You know what's good? Chocolate chip blueberry pancakes with pecans. Don't want to make pancakes every morning? Try this.

I started with PR's BBA basic sourdough recipe, using a milled mixture of 50/50 hard red and hard white wheat with KA New England sourdough starter. I then added the following: