Blog posts

This one was inspired by WoodenSpoon @ thefreshloaf in this post . I had a bit of fresh lavender growing and the rains of early summer made me do this one. Some information was missing from the original post and various people have followed up with their own bakes but as far as I could see nobody had actually posted a full recipe / calculation for the bread so....

FULL RECIPE AND CALCULATIONS HERE

I’m joining my partner in Newfoundland to visit his family there. Working from home I was able to squeeze in a bake so I could bring some bread with me. Since my dinner guests all seem to have enjoyed my brioche, I decided to bake a 50% WW SD Brioche, but this time with the addition of dark chocolate chips to make it a bit more decadent.

Benny's milk bread and trying to make hamburger buns are two bakes that have been on my list for quite a while.  I've also been wanting to do another round of my Honey Ginger and Jasmine Rice bread.  This weekend I tackled all three at once and used this bake as the basis, but I went with Active Dry Yeast (ADY) instead of sourdough.

Makes twelve buns big enough to easily handle a 1/2 pound hamburger patty (as a size estimate)...

Another variation on my 100% WW SD Hokkaido milk bread, this time with orange zest and poppyseeds. The weather is much more humid this time of year and as a result my flour isn’t able to absorb quite as much water as during the winter. I forgot to take this into account so the dough was stickier and more challenging to shape. Ultimately it baked up just fine, giving it a good couple of hours in the fridge would have helped a bit but I didn’t do that since I was out of bread so that is an emergency around here!

Hello, friends!

I made burger buns in the air fryer on the 4th of July, but I didn't document the process. 

I asked my good friend Mike for some of his homebrewed Ale so I could use it in a bake and I have to say the results were quite good.

I thought some fresh milled rye and spelt would go perfectly with the ale and I wasn’t mistaken. I added a nice healthy handful of shredded cheese mix which included Asiaggo, Parmesan and Cheddar which paired perfectly with the other ingredients.

New week, new loaf!

This one is a medley of 3 things:
- Buckwheat (Bobs Red Mill)
- Shio Kombu (thin sheets of kelp boiled in soy sauce, mirin, and sugar, then dried and cut into small pieces)
- Aonori (dried and powdered green seaweed)

This just happens to be the softest, lightest, tallest, least sour WW pan loaf I have ever made. Something I wasn’t sure was possible with my home milled grains. I am not sure I can technically say it’s 100% WW because I sifted out 10% of the bran with a 40# screen but only out of the flour used in the final mix. I left the bran in for lthe two stage levain. This was my first attempt to use yeast water for whole grain after reading something Dabrownman wrote here years ago about how it would lighten up whole grain loaves. Indeed it does!

Maybe one (well two) of my best loaves ever, I think.  I was really happy with these, especially because I made them for a family gathering, and I'm always afraid of making loaves to share that don't end up turning out to be up to my personal standards.

While searching for injera bread last week, I happened upon some roasted barley at an Ethiopian grocery and bought it thinking it might make a richer variation on my experimentation with barley porridge loaves.

Roasted barley- 250g

water (with a little yogurt mixed in)- 500g + extra 

Early on in my baking adventures when looking for a 100% rye sourdough I stumbled across Patrick Ryan and his videos on the ilovecookingireland youtube channel. I was pleasantly surprised when when this more recent video came across my feed and though this would be a perfect way to use some of the fresh basil from the back garden.