After practicing daily with my six-string braiding crutch
Today I built and baked a six-strand challah
Nailed the braiding, but I hadn't expected (hadn't thought it through) how big this loaf would turn out: it's resting on a 17" drying rack.
I thought I would share a few pics from last night's pizza dinner. I used Nancy Silverton's pizza dough recipe from her Mozza book. I made a few adjustments with fermentation times, but for the most part, it's the same.
I've had the pizza at Mozza and I think it's one of the best (if not, the best) pizza in Los Angeles. This recipe is not supposed to be an exact duplicate of the pizza dough at Mozza, but rather, a home baker's version. I think it came out pretty darn good, if I do say so myslef!
http://www.wildyeastblog.com/2008/08/25/cranberry-oat-sourdough-scones/
Made these quick and delicious scones using pantry ingrediants so made some changes:
Used KAF WWW for all flours, including oat
Added 0.5C walnut chips
Used frozen and thawed sourdough starter
Used 0.13tsp of KAF Fiori di Sicilia instead of the lemon zest
My daughter gave me her old Nikon and I figured out how to use it today. It has a photo setting called 'Food' that lets you take do some kind of macro. It also has a close up setting too. 12 MP, wide angle and image stabilization with a decent auto focus. Very cool.
I haven't baked anything but some of my personal "comfort food" breads for the past few weeks. These are just good almost any way - plain, with butter, toasted with almond butter and apricot preserves, French toast, as garlic bread, for panini ....
Hamelman's Pain au Levain
In continuing my mission to bake my way through The Bread Bible, I had the opportunity to try the recipe for Whole Wheat Walnut Raisin Bread. I was a bit worried it would be a bit advanced for my skill level, but I was baking it for my dad, who needed to transition to whole wheat bread to aid in his recovery from intestinal surgery.
For St Paddy's day I decided to not do a croissant bread or one shaped into an Irish Harp but one that was sort of shaped into a soccer ball (the national sport of Ireland by far) with alternating green and a white-ish patches. Plus it had to have a bottle of Guinness as well along with 10% WW and Rye for a well rounded flavor. I won't have crumb shots till tomorrow but the crust turned out a deep brown with cracks, just like the last DO SD bread managed to exhibit. The spring was about 3" or about 75%. It started 1" blow the rim of the DO when it went in
Development Day Work with Nigel, 13th March 2012
I didn't have time to post detailed entries on my latest bread attempts, but here's a quick roundup and some photos of what I've made in the last week:
1. Sunflower Seed Rye
This was a 30% rye recipe/formula that I learned at the artisan bread course I took last fall. The 70% hydration dough uses my sourdough starter built up with rye flour the night before, and some white flour added the next day along with some toasted sunflower seeds.
