Blog posts

This is my take on Melon Pan, a Japanese bread. Several TFLers have already posted this here, here and even the admin himself here. It's an interesting bread and suits Japanese/Asian tastes well; a soft enriched dough is wrapped with a cookie (most likely a sugar cookie) dough, rolled in sugar then scored before proofing and baking.

This bread is adapted from Hamelman's formula for 40% Rye Caraway Sourdough. Formula was exactly the same save that I omitted the yeast and method was different.

A swirl of buttery layers that gets fried in a pan. Made with 50% semolina and 50% bread flour. Eat warm when it gets out of the pan. So good on its own that you really don't need anything except iced tea or a glass of wine with it.

Previous ones did not rise enough for my liking, but this is the first success. With grass fed butter = ZOMG!!!! 

The two on the left are sourdough and the two on the right are Hamelman's Roasted Potato and Onion loaf. 

I tried a different blend of flours with the sourdough this time. Had much better results. 

400 g AP

400 g Bread

75 g WW

Two bakes of note this week. One was a pleasant surprise the other a reminder of what I don't want to do. The loaf started with what was supposed to be a leaven build but got interrupted by events and had to be refrigerated instead of taking it to the point of mixing the dough.  I should have just started over but instead took it out of cold storage and carried on as if no pause happened. A porridge was made with freshly coarse ground spelt, home ground corn and steel cut oats cooked in half milk half water and cooled.

This week’s bake was my second attempt at sourdough and I’m pretty pleased with the result!

It certainly looks better that last week’s attempt and it tastes better too! Sourdough is really yummy! 

(Last weeks try: http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/45059/first-sourdough-loaf-need-help)

This time I gave the dough a 4.5 bulk fermentation at room temp, I did four S&F at half hour intervals during the first 2.5 hours before shaping and then I left it for another 2 hours.

Thanks to David's (dmsnyder) online scoring tutorial, there's hope for me! Up to this point, I've been stymied in my efforts to score effectively. Oh, I'd been able to make cuts that allowed for oven spring while avoiding blowouts, but most of those were "cheats" accomplished with a set of kitchen shears.

Round about the holidays, I invested in a real lame, but I seem to lack the confidence--or is it the coordination? (I was always picked last for teams in gym class)--to achieve beautiful scoring.  And the ear remained elusive...until today.

I'm having fun finding new, yummy add-ins for my standard Pain au Levain (see the Sage & Onion blog post for the formula). Today I made some loaves with roasted garlic, parmesan, sun-dried tomatoes and a bit of chopped rosemary.

Last year's garlic is starting to sprout (and sadly, this year's won't be ready to harvest until July), so I'm using it up. The sun dried tomatoes were soaked in hot water for a few hours then chopped, and the rosemary was fresh out of the garden.

Lovely dough, as always, after a few stretch & folds:

Today I tried to bake bread on a three-phase sourdough. Breads recipe is different from the classic recipe that is described in the book of Handbuch Sauerteig (M.J. Brand). But the result is still delicious!