Blog posts

Scali loaves make a wonderful flavored Italian bread!  I think I will will use this recipe from King Arthur Flours to make some torpedo rolls even though it is traditionally braided with added sesame seeds.  The crumb is perfect for sandwiches and the crust is crunchy good with the added flavor of the sesame seeds.  We loved it even with my fresh made "Bing Cherry Jam"!  Oh, the cherries are so sweet and good this year and well worth the pitting to make jam!

A quick entry today because I didn't do much. The raisin bread is wonderful and filled the house with that "to die for" smell, but I can't take much credit for it. I had a mound of dough left over from the sticky buns yesterday so I figured I'd just stretch and fold some raisins into it and let er rip. It sat and proofed for another hour and into the oven for 40 mins at 350. I think the neighbors could smell it from the street cuz it's going fast. I just made myself a "moscow mule" and browsed BBA for SD tips. I have a firm starter getting ready for a basic white SD tomorrow.

I tried making the grilled pizza margharita featured last week on WildYeast over the weekend. The recipe makes two pizzas so I grilled one Friday night and the second, Saturday for lunch.

-- Recipe revised on July 7, 2009 | Shaping technique revised on July 7, 2009 --

         Hi. Here is a short introduction. I'm one of the newer Dave's on TFL. I'm 56, Canadian  and getting ready to retire. I spent my early years in open pit mining and oil field construction work. I spent a couple cold and interesting years in mine construction in the high Arctic. The last 16 years have been spent operating in the pulping and steam side of newsprint production. Now we're waiting for our house to sell in a slowing Alberta economy so we can move to our second home on Vancouver Island.

I needed to revive my grape starter (I dried it using [url=http://www.wildyeastblog.com/?s=drying+a+starter/]the method here[/url]) to make sure that it is still alive and happy.  And indeed it is.  I dried it a month and a half ago because it was getting too strong and active and I couldn't keep up with it.  It took me 4 days to bring it back from its sleep and on the 5th day (yesterday) I mixed up a batch of dough.

Hamelman's 5-grain Soudough made with rye sour is currently one of my favorite bread. The formula calls for high-gluten flour, but I have not had any for a while. I now have some KAF Sir Lancelot flour, and this is the first bread in which I used it. 

This is my first post ever! I am a graduate student who has a love for bread. I grew up in Hong Kong, and my favorite food as a child included 豬仔包 and 雞尾包 ("little pig roll" and cocktail bun). I have since immigrated to the US. As I grew older, my tastes have changed. I discovered the sourdough from Panera. Later, I would become acquainted with the wonderful spice that is cinnamon, which introduced me to cinnamon swirl and cinnamon raisin breads. When I visited the New York Chinatown, I became a fanatic for the raisin buns.

[u][b]My formula for the dough[/b][/u]:  

220 g organic stonegournd wholemeal starter @75% hydration 

400 g organic stoneground wholemeal flour (protein 14%+)

25 g water

270 g fat free butter milk

9 g salt   

(final dough weight 924 g and dough hydration 74% ) 

http://chausiubao.deviantart.com/art/CaP-2-127364147

Further improvements on my white bread included three changes.

1.) Salt-less autolyse period

2.) Decreased amount of preferment

3.) Decreased hydration

Because an autolyse is meant to increase extensibility, salt would be a bad addition, this would counter the decrease in extensibility of a drier dough. However, I should be able to score these loaves because they are drier.