Skibum's blog

Oh my! Great idea Josh! Any other great ideas like this would be most warmly welcomed.

Best regards, Brian

I have been skiing five days a week now for a while, so not much time to browse TFL. My baking thoughts have turned from bread to sweets. this is a three layer orange chiffon cake from ITJB, filled with apricot jam and chocolate butter cream and iced with the same chocolate. The chocolate didn't adhere to the orange slices, so I painted around them. YUMM!

Other recent bakes were my send off on Floyd's blueberry cream cheese bread in the most bookmarked section. Here is my bumbleberry cream cheese bread. This was a yeasted bread with about three times the fruit Floyd rec's in his formula.

Well we cannot forget the walnut filled Hungarian rolls from ITJB -- easily one of the best things my oven has ever produced!

Happy baking folks!  Brian

Don't pay the ransom friends, I have escaped. Well between skiing and the winter Olympics it is hard to find time to bake and I have had no time to browse TLF for a coupe of weeks.

This was done from the book, but on this version I added sauteed onion to the last few stretch & folds.

Part of the reason I haven't had time to browse this site is that 2 weeks ago, I had my first experience helicopter skiing with Canadian Mountain Holidays in their Gothics lodge. this fulfilled the dream of a lifetime and was the best week and skiing of my life!

This week it is off to Revelstoke to take in some of the abundant snow and ongoing snowfall. I thought I would bake some breakfast treats for the boys in Revy. This was a batch of bumbleberry, ( strawberries, blueberries and raspberries) cream cheese bread. I did a sweet SD/ YW levain version usining Floyd's Blueberry Sourcream braid recipe in the favourites section. My other departure from the original was to use about 3 times the fruit and 1/4 the cornstarch compared to the original recipe. Boy, has this bread won some converts! Great recipe!

It is hard to stop eating this stuff!

Happy baking folks, I will catch up when I can. Brian

BOY, do I EVER LIKE this bread! This was a full version of the ITJB rye to which I added 120 grams of re-hydrated granulated onion and garlic and remembered to account for the extra water this time. I used about 4 Tbs of the onion and 1Tbs of the garlic, using the water from the soak for the bake. I once again proofed my boules seam side down in a banneton, the baked seam side up Forkish style in a cast iron DO.

I love the 'organic bloom' this technique produces!

This is a much different bread than Peter Reinhart's NY Deli rye in BBA and I enjoy both breads! Next bake of this formula I will up the onion bu adding some sauteed fresh onion to the dried mix. Just for fun!

Happy baking folks! Brian

This was an orange chiffon cake and I will call it an upside down cake and explain that later. I used a spring form pan and manually sliced 3 layers using a vanilla fudge spread for one layer and a chocolate fudge for the other. The cake was finished with enrobing chocolate and I thought a sprinkling of ground almond and some sliced almonds would go well, as a ski bum I don't need to watch my weight.

Well this was not amusing at the time, but this bake turned into a bit of a rodeo. After pouring the chiffon batter into the spring form pan, I began to load it into the oven, accidentally releasing the spring in the process -- chiffon batter all over my kitchen floor. Undaunted, I scraped up what I could and re-filled the spring form pan and baked it off. I then spent the next 10 minutes cleaning up my kitchen floor, cabinets and so on. This morning I bought myself a bundt pan!

The yeasted doughnuts were a snap to prepare and bake off in my deep fryer and mighty tasty with the honey glase!

This is a wonderful book and has opened up a world of dessert baking I never knew I could bake. 

Loving it! Brian

Okay the Hungarian rolls filled with walnut are absolutely to die for! This is one of the best things I have ever taken out of my oven!

I baked a half recipe of Bakery Challah:

This enriched dough is similar in many ways to my beloved Pulla, but uses more egg and water rather than milk. The crumb is more open in this loaf, but I do miss the cardamom and perhaps will add some next bake -- a kind of hybrid challah/ pulla bake.

I have had great sweet levain, YW levain pulla results, so I took a similar approach to this challah using about 10% each YW sns SL. This challah has a nice open crust and makes dynamite French Toast, fried in butter and topped with maple syrup or cinnamon and sugar or both. YUMM!

I am really enjoying this book! It is almost time to try the almond horns again . . . oink, oink. The problem is we are getting bombed with snow and I love the skiing, so ski mornings and bake afternoons. It is a happy combination!

Best regards, Brian

I followed the three stage build by the book and only varied from the formula at the proof and bake stage. I shaped a boule and proofed seam side down in my new brotform, then baked in a hot cast iron dutch oven. I did score the loaf and I thought it looked like I had deflated it, but the loaf sprang nicely and the seams burst organically.

I have a fairly new Henckels serrated bread knife and I had to saw for quite a while to get through the crust. The crust has a nice snap when you bite into it, a very soft crumb and wonderful flavour!

This bread made a superb Montreal smoked meat sandwich and this bread will be going into my regular baking rotation. Next bake I will add the onions, dehydrated and fresh, fried in oil along with the onion water. I really liked how that kicked up the flavour profile in my last Peter Reinhart deli rye version.

I have one more loaf to bake so my friends and neighbours will be very happy with me today. Next up is the Hungarian walnut filled rolls,

Norm and Stan, I am LOVING your book!

Best regards, Brian

Once again from Peter Reinhart's BBA, but I did change up a couple of things in this half version. I soaked 2 Tbs of dehydrated onion and 1/2 Tbs dehydrated garlic in boiling water. I reduced the amount of milk from his suggested 114g to 54g and used the onion water for the rest of the liquid.

At Josh's suggestion, I also built two rye starters using dark rye flour, one from my sweet levain and the other a yeast water/ rye starter. Boy did those two changes ever improve the flavour profile! Reducing the milk also gavbe a better chew and the bread didn't tear apart when i was cutting it.

I also used the rehydrated onion and garlic in the starter, did not have enough volume by weight, so fried up another 100g of onion in EVOO and added to the starter. I let the starter get happy on the counter for 4 or 5 hours and then into the fridge overnight.

This bread makes a serious smoked meat sandwich!

Happy baking folks! Brian

I spied some chocolate hazelnut pastry in the deli yesterday and that set off the craving. I did a google search and came up with this recipe:

http://www.joyofbaking.com/biscotti/ChocolateHazelnutBiscotti.html

I scaled the formula to one half  and discovered I had only 20g of brown sugar and needed 105g. I improvised by adding 60g white sugar and 25g malt syrup. The results are outstanding! Next bake of these goodies, I will use all brown sugar, but reduce the amount and continue to use the barley syrup. YUMMMMM!

Happy baking folks and a happy, healthy and prosperous New Year! Brian

This bake was one half of Peter Reinhart's recipe from BBA. I used 50g of sweet levain and 50g yeast water levain. The dough more than doubled in an hour in the bulk ferment and even half the recipe tested the capacity of my Lodge DO. This makes a wonderful sandwich bread -- piled high with Montreal smoked meat and grainy mustard. YUMMM!

Starter

50g sweet levain

50g YW levain

128g dark rye flour

80g water

170g onion, sauteed in oil

I let this get happy for about 4 hours and then began the mix.

Final dough

228g strong bread flour

64g dark rye flour

14g brown sugar

8g salt

1 tsp caraway seed

114g whole milk

100g water

I mixed, rested for 20 minutes, then kneaded for 6 minutes, then into an oiled bowl to bulk ferment. In an hour this cough had more than doubled, so degas, stretch and fold  and pre-shape. After 10 minutes I shaped a boule and proofed in a linen lined wire mesh colander suspended in a mixing bowl. After 30 minutes proofing the oven went on at 400F. After an hour of proofing I scored and baked in the hot cast DO covered for 12 minutes, then uncovered for another 24 minutes convection turning every 4 minutes. 

Happy baking! Brian