Blog posts

Another Disastrous Bake

Last weekend I misread the book, I ended up with a sluggish layered tartine. 

This week I remember to cut in the add-in, but I ended up with a flat disc. I took a few pic during the process hopefully that could help in spotting the issues.

I am pretty sure I have overproof it as I have warm it up on counter, it expanded quite a bit, shaping isnt the best as it didnt hold its shape. Could it be possible that my first bulk isnt at the right timing as well?

After mixing and before bulk fermentation 

Warning: This post may contain information and language which may be opinionated, sarcastic, or darkly humorous. It is not intended to offend, it is intended to portray my own personal way of looking at and doing things.

I did my research for this one, and yes, I did have a recipe, although as it turned out, it was a recipe that I already had, ingredient for ingredient, amount for amount. Both are traditional fried breads, the difference occurs with how the dough is prepared prior to being fried.

Hello Guys, 

Here's a bread that I made a couple of days ago and I thought I'd share it with you. Im just going to jump into the recipe. 

The following are the ingredients I used:

- 200 g bread flour.

- 120 g room temp water (60% hydration)

- 1/2 tsp instant yeast

- 1/4 cup greek yogurt 

- 4 g salt 

- 3 g sugar (optinal) 

- 1 1/2 tbsp olive oil.

to share with  family and friends. Two traditional: Welsh Cakes, and Date-nut Pinwheels, and two newer: Chocolate-Chocolate chip-Chipotle-Hazelnut and Ameretta-Almond Biscotti. Thirty dozen total.

Happy Holidays to all,

David G

This is a continuation of my spelt brioche experimentation.  This time I used 50% AP flour, 50% spelt flour, 50% unsalted butter, 32% eggs, 20% yogurt, 16% palm sugar/sucanat mixture, 2.5% salt, and a little instant dry yeast.  I prefermented 20% of the flour in a liquid levain at 100% hydration using my rye SD starter.  I am pretty happy with the result.  It's a tangy bread due to the yogurt and liquid levain.  I think next time I can up the sugar level...  My total dough weight was approx 1200g, divivided between two 4.5" cube pullman pans.  The dough on

Holy oven spring Batman! This was essentially the same as my last pulla bake but used only YW levain to leaven the loaf. I also used only 30% bread flour and 70% AP. The dough felt quite a bit more extensible than just using strong bread flour. Yeast water makes for some mighty tasty pulla and sweet dough and the loaf volumes are truly astonishing to me!

I once again brushed on an egg glaze and sprinkled liberally with sugar, ground almond and chopped slivered almonds.

I've been baking a lot lately, as I try to master my Cadco oven.   Some breads come out better than in my conventional gas home oven, others not so  much.   The other day I made challah, and it came out better than ever.   Unfortunately I didn't take good notes, so I'm not quite sure how I baked it.   I did one six strand loaf and the other seven.   The seven was strangely flat and boring.   I guess I need a fancier braiding regime. 

Well, I haven't been active here in quite awhile, but I do still check in from time to time to see what people are baking and to just pick up some tips here and there.

But I baked a focaccia yesterday and wrote up the recipe to post for some folks on a couple of other sites, so I thought I might as well share here too, in case anyone is interested. I'm just going to put it up how I did on the other sites and try to fix up the formatting for how it works here. Here goes:

Notes:

Hey guys, 

With all the family here for Thanksgiving and then some personal parts replacements (my eyes are getting brand new lenses, the kind without cataracts.), I haven't been posting much. So, this is a catch-up on my last few weeks' breads.

Hamelman's Pain au Levain Delicious with the Lamb and root vegetables braised in merlot I made to welcome our arriving Thanksgiving guests - just to fuel them to help making Thanksgiving dinner, you know.