For those of you who are interested in Italian baking, particularly the Italian brioches, these books from Italian Gourmet are worth noting:
Un Panettone Mondiale (with English text): "The stars and all the recipes of the first international national competition on the beloved Italian delicacy".
I thought I’d try something a bit different both in the dough as well as the shaping for these buns. We are going to have fish burgers tonight so wanted buns for them. The braiding was somewhat successful but could be better since this was my first time trying this. A slightly lower hydration would have helped this immensely, but ensuring a bit more flour on the dough when making the knots. The excess hydration was due to the egg being 11 g too heavy. Next time I’d beat the egg and then add the correct amount.
Spring is here... soon it will be too warm to use the large indoor oven. It's the season for min-ovens (MO) and bread machines (BM) to be used more frequently, often set up out on the porch.
Over the last year or so I've tested dozens of BM's, looking for the ones that do the best job at mixing/kneading, fermenting/proofing, and baking. This thread is about the baking part.
I haven’t done this style of bread in sometime, I found a package of freeze dried strawberries in the back of a cupboard so it inspired me to use it. Matcha and strawberries are great together. Although I have made this style of bread before, I’d never done with with my mochi formula which uses sweet rice flour as the tangzhong.
I last made these around the holidays and wanted to make them again based on comments I received. Essentially there wasn’t quite enough ginger in them, the cinnamon was dominant the first time. I fix that I’ve increase the ginger by 50% and based on comments from people who ate them, I think I’ve got that right now.
Here is a copy of a Baker's Percentage spreadsheet I developed. I have included a blank version and a copy of my Country Loaf Recipe.
thank you all for taking the time to read this lengthy post and any feedback is very much appreciated.
As I had posted in reply to cfraenkel, this Easter I tried to make a Greek sweet Easter bread that has eluded me so far in terms of a successful bake.
They haven't been a disaster, but also not what I had tried and liked so much.
I pretty much have this one down pat. I am now working on an unfed l, overnight room temperature ferment style.
It's the early bird that catches the worm.
Bake off protocol initiated.
1. Preheat sequence - T Minus 30 minutes to completion.
2. Pre bake visual fermentation inspection ✅
95-100% of full fermentation achieved.
3. The flip ✅
4. The Slash ✅
5. The Load ✅
6. Initiate steam injection ✅
Now we wait...
My goodness, how good fresh bread smells in the morning!
Hey everyone,
I've posted another recipe on my website, this time for a pocket-style barley bread we have in Egypt. This one was slightly challenging to produce a full pocket with barley flour since it doesn't contribute any gluten. Pocket formation seems to depend on a strong gluten network and I managed to get enough strength in the dough by using 50% wheat and 50% barley while pushing my oven to its maximum temperature.
Check out the recipe here: Egyptian barley bread recipe
