Blog posts

This is close to last Friday’s bake that got mooshed and mangled (M&M’ed) coming out of the Romertopf clay baker.  Not wanting to end that bake on a bad note and not wanting to bake the same recipe twice Lucy decided to double the sprouted whole grain flour, drop the non sprouted whole grain flour, up the VWG and honey, dropping the boiled potato slightly and lowering the hydration slightly.

Karin (hanseata) invited me to her Götz-Brot challenge, an interesting one that leaves lots of room for imagination.

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/38938/challenge-fellow-bakers-bread-knight-iron-hand

Here is my take:

My idea for this Götz bread was to create something that
- could easily be made in a hotel kitchen
- uses a straightforward and flexible process
- uses ingredients that grow locally

…triticale croissants.

Who didn’t see this coming? Hands? Ah, well.

Triticale is my baking nemesis, my bête noir, and unfortunately my favorite grain. A cross between wheat and rye, it is very high in protein, but its gluten is of low quality. If you have ever heard a discussion about milling, you will hear that the protein content of wheat is higher as you get to the outside of the endosperm, but higher in ash and lower in quality. What does this really mean?

Well this loaf is similar in many respects to my lasted posted bake, with two changes: barley malt syrup instead of brown sugar and more of it by weight and one whole egg, beaten. 

Soaker

20g white wheat berries

20g red wheat berries

10g red flax

10g gold flax

10g quinoa

174g hot water

I soaked this 24 hours in a cool dark place, then added:

10g wheat bran

10g steel cut oats and left it to sprout for another day or 2

When the berries are sprouting I finish the mixing.

Milk scald

174g milk scalded

As my 3.5 year old daughter would say, "deeeliciousss". Wonderful with cheese or just butter. We enjoy this bread for breakfast. Link to the recipe -

http://brotdoc.com/2013/05/26/musli-brot/

Enjoy baking!

Sid

I'm pretty sire you won't find this pie in New York City - at least not a good one or one made with this recipe.  Like pecan pie, this is a very old Southern recipe and no two are the same - the chocolate version is Lucy's favorite even though chocolate is poison for dogs.

Ok.Lucy cheated by putting in an extra pat of butter at the very end to float around, melt wherever and adding more buttery goodness.

I enjoyed the sprouted grains and seeds so much in my last multi grain loaf that I baked another one and a a third on the go. A week later this bread is still making great toast.

Soaker

20g white wheat berries

20g red wheat berries

10g red flax

10g gold flax

10g quinoa

174g hot water

I soaked this 24 hours in a cool dark place, then added:

10g wheat bran

10g steel cut oats and left it to sprout for another day or 2

When the berries are sprouting I finish the mixing.

Milk scald

174g milk scalded

Cheddar and Apple Sourdough, adapted from Paul Hollywood

I have enjoyed making a number of Paul Hollywood recipes, and this one is a favorite of my friends.  They aren't as fond of sourdough, so I had to do something different.  My sister likes this recipe, too, and she is not into bread or sourdough.  It's tough not to live cheddar, apples and sourdough together. I halved the recipe to make one loaf instead of two, as these loaves tend to be quite big. I’ve left the original recipe below, which will result in two loaves.

This weekend was a busy one, but I still managed to bake my loaves in the dual combo cooker.

Because we were having a BBQ birthday celebration on Saturday, I had too many things to do and not enough room to do them, until the house cleared out.  Saturday night, I took my tablespoon full of starter and mixed it with 200 grams of freshly milled hard red winter wheat, and 200 grams of water.  The product started out looking like this:

This experiment turned out so well I thought I'd share the formula. The levain uses only yeasts from fermented fig water. There is just a hint of fennel and caraway, with a gentle sweetness from honey. Typical of fruit yeast, there is a noticeable lack of acidity.  Nice moist crumb. Keeps well. Delicious!  

I used fruit yeast rather than sourdough or commercial yeast because with a bread this "pure", I didn't want any sourness or extraneous flavors to take away from the subtle flavors.

And there's something about using figs to leaven a fig bread.