Blog posts

    I wanted to make a nice soft sandwich roll and had not used the Tangzhong method in a while.  This method never fails to deliver a soft tasty bun.  The addition of the potatoes and Greek yogurt along with caramelized onions put this one over the top.

For some of the rolls I added some shredded cheese on top and for the others some smoked sesame seeds were added.

The end result was a soft, flavorful roll perfect for a burger or sandwich.

Inspired by Mini Oven comment to my Eclipse 2017 challenge bread #2 I decided to try the idea of stuffing the vegetables with the sourdough. All the bell peppers and egg plan are from our home garden.

https://goodcookingfortheheartandsoul.blogspot.com/2017/08/yesterday-my-bride-was-going-to-be-out.html -  Follow this link for the full pictorial guide. 

I was looking for a nice pie recipe and came across this old post. 

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/19545/apple-pie-dream-pie-crust-realized

Along with my play-time (the Eclipse experiments), I also needed a basic sandwich loaf for the week.  We've had hot, dry weather, bringing on the need for an early harvest, so not much time at home right now and a need for much portable food!

For our sandwiches this week, I wanted to use up the last of my older durum and kamut berries (since I had stocked up again), use up the rest of the rye levain that I had built, and keep it fairly high in whole grains. 

  With Mini Oven’s Eclipse Bread challenge in mind, and the need to get my “mother” durum starter built back up, I started last week by pulling out 10g each of my 65% hydration rye and durum starters and starting with 3-stage levain builds, getting them both up to 80% hydration, and shooting for about 270g total of each levain.

Having managed to create two yeast waters, from plums and apples in my own garden, it was time to try them out to make some bread.

This bread was inspired by a nmygarden comment (Thanks Cathy for your comment!!!!) to my Elderberry and Hokkaido squash bread.

I wanted to be a little bit more innovative with this bread. I knew I need to make a black dough which was kind of a mental reservation for me, but then I accepted this idea and got 20 g of black color made from charcoal.

This bread is really a little bit unusual. I used sourdough colored with charcoal to simulate obscuration and Hokkaido squash to simulate the sun's corona.

The dough during the bake expanded much more than anticipated due to intensive fermentation in the bottom part which was warming up slowly due to the squash collar. I created an opening in the bottom of squash to get more even heat transfer and also to get another "solar eclipse" from the bottom side of the loaf.

I think I don't need to explain more as pictures are self explanatory.

First two movies: