Blog posts

I have a big birthday for my partner to plan.  So part of that is to bake one of his favourite cakes, carrot cake.  You will notice that baking cakes isn’t something I do very often, in fact I probably bake fewer than one per year.  So I thought it would be prudent to do a test bake and ensure that the recipe I’m doing tastes good and that I can turn out a decent cake.  I hope to make this a three layer cake and decorate it better, although my decorating skills aren’t that great.

I've been eyeing this one for some time -- http://theryebaker.com/vitebsk-rye/. My partner doesn't like the heaviness of whole grain ryes, so I figured a 100% light rye might intrigue her. Also, in a different thread, where I foolishly argued that I could see no reason to use light or medium rye when you could use whole grain, Ilya recommended that I try a light rye to see how it showcases flavors like fennel and anise.

My family has a lot of birthdays from December to January.  My mother’s is one of them so we are having her over for brunch this weekend.  My favourite thing to make for brunch is a strata, I’ve made a few now and they are always tasty.  One thing I should do but haven’t is bake the challah a couple of days ahead so it can stale a bit.  So I decided I’d bake a slight variation of challah by adding the zest of half an orange to my sourdough challah 50% whole wheat.

      Well, 9/40ths Rye to be exact, but that doesn't roll off the tongue so well.  I haven't had rye flour on hand in a while, so I've been wanting to do a partial rye loaf for a while.  I did a full rye loaf two weeks back, which was tasty but a whole different beast.

Ilya recently started a thread linking to Martin Philip’s recipe on the King Arthur website for a IDY Pan de Cristal.  I’ve always wanted to try baking this unique bread and I’m glad that I have now.  I believe most recipes for this bread have some olive oil in them, so I added that.  Also rather than mixing all the water at once, I bassinaged the water gradually.  I used my Ankarsrum Assistent to mix since I am still learning to use it and want to get as much experience as possible.  It does an awesome job with bassinage.

The trip was a gift to our oldest grandson for his high school graduation--two years after the fact.  Yup, COVID got in the way of that, too.

Since it was Josh's trip, we built it around his interests.  Much fun and lots of great memories but bakeries didn't figure into the mix.  In spite of that, my wife and I were both blown away by the bakeries/patisseries that we did notice in our perambulations.  The creativity and craftsmanship of the bakers who turn out such beautiful loaves and pastries is beyond impressive.

This bread continues my adventures with rye bread, having done a couple of Borodinsky recipes as well as Lithuanian recipes.  The inspiration to give it a try came from the recent posting by alcophile, and I actually began this loaf before Benito posted his bake.  The process differs from almost anything else that I have baked and involves essentially a forty hour poolish followed by one hour for the final mixing, shaping, and proofing.

I baked this for the staff in our building as a Happy New Year present to them for all they do for us. Using once again my 50% WW SD Hokkaido Milk Bread dough as the base, I infused it with cardamom, cloves and orange zest. The filling has cardamom, cloves, cocoa powder, sugar, flour and chunks of dark chocolate. I have found that when the shaped dough is filled with spices and sugar that the hygroscopic effects of the sugar causes the layers to separate when baked. I now add flour in a 1:4 ratio to the sugar to counter this and so far it has worked well.

It's been a while since I posted but thought I would post this new bake.  Recipe from Emmanuel Hadjiandreou "Gutes Brot".  Not sure that I can print the recipe here.  I did scale his recipe down a little to give 1 x 700 gm loaf.

I didn't follow his methodology but rather just made the dough as I normally do.  Took a small amount of starter and refreshed 1:1:1 meaning to refresh again before bed.  I forgot so early yesterday morning I built it 1:3:3.

The farm I worked for this year sold at a farmers market in Atlanta at which a small bakery, Osono Bread, sold very good bread but, more importantly, top-notch cream-filled doughnuts.  I've been wanting to attempt something akin to them this whole year.  I finally got around to it for Christmas morning!