Blog posts

The baking bug bit me about six weeks ago.  Started with banana bread, baked two loaves of yeasted bread in my lodge cast iron loaf pans, moved on to making pizzas and then tried my hand at sourdough -- ciabatta, english muffins and english muffin bread and even a "basis sourdough loaf" that I read about in a Jane Harrison's "An EasyGuide to Sourdough" which contains weird volume measurements: 2 cups of flour, 1.5 cups starter, 3/4 tsp of sale.   No added water in the recipe but always needed to add water in order to form a dough.

Well  it's Sunday 12-8-13 and we have freezing rain. My world is cold and covered with ice...except the wood fired oven that is nice and hot.

What a better time to do some baking. Work has been bogging me down so baking was forced on the side lines.  With the onset of winter I should have more time for baking :-)

This is the crumb for the multi-grain sourdough I experimented with recently over three days. The dough was primarily unbleached white and spelt with a touch of whole wheat.  The levain was left for 18 hours, due to cold temperatures, and the dough was refrigerated for almost 36 hours and then set out at room temperature overnight in a banneton.  I will continue to tinker....

I messed around with making Sweet Potato Dinner Rolls the other day.

220 gr.    Sweet Potato pulp from baking the potato first 

228 gr.    Warm Milk

58 gr.      Melted Butter, + more for brushing the tops

400 gr.    AP Flour, KA

100  gr.   Sprouted Whole Wheat Flour

14 gr.      Kosher Salt 

25 gr.      Light Brown Sugar

8  gr.      Dry Yeast

Method:

This is the Balthazar's Bakery's chocolate bread. I first ate it in 2007 at $9 a loaf. When I got home I searched and found the recipe online. It is a fantastic bread...but I took it up a huge notch with my starter instead of theirs. Wow..what a shreddable fantastic crumb. I also added dried cherries to 3 of the loaves.  An amazing bread. You will need a mixer to fully realize this dough. It needs 5 min and then 10 min and then about 2 min . It has the butter beaten in like a brioche but there are no eggs...lots of chocolate.

We needed some Hamburger Bun for Friday night’s monthly HB feast and have also wanted to make Mark’s rolls found here:

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/32954/potato-rolls-video

I’m pretty sure that these aren’t supposed to be HB Buns but they looked close enough to me to give them a try and I’m glad we did.  They turned out great – s good in fact I didn’t even get a crumb shot or a HB picture either,

I have been experimenting with different flours, different hydration, refrigerated proofing, etc. to see if I can improve my sourdough baking.  This one turned out well, using a three-day method and primarily unbleached white flour and spelt flour.  There is a touch of whole wheat as well.  I liked this try and will continue to try and refine my baking!

For Thanksgiving we were visiting my wife's family in North Carolina as we always do and as usual we brought have our kitchen with us so we could bake for the main feast.

This year I made a double batch of my German Sourdough Pumpernickel Pretzel Rolls and another version of my Tangzhong Onion rolls.  I changed up some of the flour and also added some shredded cheese in the mix for added flavor.

I had been looking for bakers to bake my bread in bulk for me but never seemed to find the right one.  There were various reasons why each baker wasn't right and why I wasn't the right situation for them. Last Spring, before giving up the whole idea of selling my breads commercially, I gave it one last shot: could I develop a Gluten-Free Sourdough Bread Mix?

It took me 2 months to develop a user-friendly, genuine, sourdough bread mix. The mix takes about 24 hours to complete, less time than making gluten-free sourdough bread from scratch, about 3-4 days.