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Growing up I remember eating whole wheat pita (commercially produced) to have veggie sandwich pockets. I figured it was time to give this a try and see if I could get a nice pocket bread myself. Following the instructions in Whole Grain Breads was not difficult and with the use of a stand mixer to do the actual gluten development I found this to be surprisingly easy. 

RECIPE AND CALCULATIONS HERE

Day 1 - Mix the soaker and biga and leave overnight. 

In all honesty this bread wasn't planned until the day before I started my bake. I was planning on something else and then I stumbled across this thread from our very own Benny! 

Red Miso Furikake (Sesame seeds and Nori) sourdough

With the kids out of the house and unable to bring baked goods to the office, I mostly stopped baking croissants. Husband has been wanting to eat some recently, and we never seem to catch the short hours of our favorite local bakery. So I made some yesterday and baked a few this morning (putting most of the batch in the freezer after shaping). 

First days of really warm weather and after working in the garden all day yesterday we thought we really deserved pizza.

Fast recipe, inspired by one on the back of the bag of flour: 

1kg Anna Napoletana 00 flour 

680 g lukewarm tap water

12-15g salt

7 g dry yeast 

Mix everything into a rough dough.  Do 2-3 stretch and folds.  Let the dough double,  then divide into balls ( I did 6)

Inspired by, the pizza bible. However, this bake morphed into something completely different. Thick Brooklyn style. Specifically Armondo's, Canarsie-Brooklyn, Rockaway Parkway. (L train station) Thick Sicilian pizza.

The sfincione Palermitano is born. AKA, It's hip to be square

18X12 half sheet pan. 1,100 grams of dough. Three-day dough: Day one starter refresh/build. On day two, mix the final dough. 28 hr. cold ferment/Two hr. room temperature final proof. I realized I was out of barley malt. I substituted 2% Brown sugar. The rest is as written

Recipe in Russian (run it through the google translation) https://brotgost.blogspot.com/2018/12/blog-post.html?fbclid=IwAR2XYpM14tgTXPgoKt1db3XS9petMTSEBnKbZpbSktLuj4YMkiQ_rIiUXxY&m=1

I baked this bread several times with great success,  but this time I made several mistakes and the crumb surely shows it.

First thought looking at this crumb: weak starter

April 20 - 21, 2022.  90th bake.

In my earlier blog post I described how I made my first ever amazake from scratch.  It is delicious, rich and sweet despite there being no added sugar.  Today I am doing a test bake of an Amazake Sourdough Vegan Hokkaido Milk Bread.  The amazake was used to make the tangzhong.  Because it is so sweet I didn’t add any sugar to the dough as I usually would.  I’m hoping that I have enough dough to fill the 10x10x10cm pullman pan I have and that it’ll bake up into a nice cube.

I recently dropped into our local sake maker and picked up another package of koji rice.  My plan was to make my third batch of homemade miso since our first one is disappearing quickly and the second one is just over a month into its fermentation which will take a fully year or so.  However, I borrowed the book Koji Alchemy and have been reading through it and I’m finding it so fascinating and it is giving me some other ideas for my koji rice.

I love this bread and the whole process is so nice

https://youtu.be/p_zZggD827c

In a pint jar I added some rye malt and raisins,  topped it with lukewarm tap water and then splashed in some homemade apple scrap vinegar. After just 10 hours at 38°C it's already showing the signs of fermentation. It's still not ready yet for making a starter, but maybe tomorrow?