Blog posts

We had a bleary eyed start to Saturday after a late evening celebrating my birthday. A dinner out with friends at a fantastic bistro www.confit.com.au

Taste sensation of the night was baked fresh dates stuffed with gorgonzola, mixed cress salad, pedro ximinez dressing…OMG!!!

Anyway … bleary eyed today.

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Baked a version of Lumos' Swiss/Bernese Oberland today. I think hydration was a little too high, and gluten not developed enough. Still happy with my progress. And tastes great!

2.5 hrs w/ 2 S&F bulk ferment

14 hr cold retard

3 hr final proof

20 minutes in combo cooker in non-preheated 550F oven. Uncovered and cooked 35 minutes at 475F.

And it's already gone for lunch! 

I have been thinking a lot about dough strength lately because of the difficulty I've had baking with durum flour.    I saw a great article on dough strength referenced in an old TFL post.

Whenever I make bread I leave some in the fridge for frying.  Sometime over the past several months I forgot it and it started to bubble and smell a bit sour...I added it to my bread and  now I always leave some of my bread as a starter for the next batch....And the bread is amazing fried in a cast iron pan with a bit of butter, and split and more added.  I actually use Becel...good as butter.  I like to think this type of sourdough with yeast added to every new batch has the same health benefits as regular sourdough which I gave up on.

Monday is Thankgiving Day in Canada.  I'm listening to CBC 1 and they are talking all about turkey, cranberries, and stuffing.  Yum.

For Canadians looking for recipes to bake this weekend, a few of the more popular Thanksgiving recipes here:

 Buttermilk Cluster

I just love this recipe, thanks to Floyd for posting it!  It is just sweet enough and soft enough that you can't stop eating them!  I made these to go with my blackened salmon burgers............YUM!!  The sweetness of the roll was just a delicious combo!

Ok, so here are my bagels, not my first time making them.  I've actually been making bagels for several years now.  I haven't had any complaints about them, in fact, many people say they really like them!  However, I was on a quest to see if I could get more out of my bagels, see if I could make them better.  So, I tried Peter Reinhart's recipe, minus the baking soda in the water on most of the bagels.

The first batch of sourdough biscuits I made (see below in the blog) were fantastic. So, of course, I had to wildly tinker with the recipe. This time, I decided to mill soft white wheat (3%) to use for the dry flour portion of the recipe. I figured there would be enough bread flour in the sourdough starter. 

I was wrong.

I got no oven spring at all. They taste good, but are dense. I told my wife they were flatbread. I don't think she bought it...

Just so that  you know I haven’t given up on T55 baguette challenge. ;)

This is a my first take on a recipe from Laurel’s Kitchen bread book. It is (Basic Whole Wheat bread). The recipe is basically an enriched (Butter/oil , and Honey) 100% whole wheat bread.

The whole procedure from mixing to baking takes roughly 5-6 hours, quite fast! Recipe calls for 1.6 tsp for a 900 grams of whole wheat flour. The hydration is about 70%, but I increased it to 75%.