Blog posts

Some facts first:

- Hokkaido is a place in Japan.

- Hokkaido Milk Loaf is THE most classic/common/well-loved sandwich bread in Asia. It's enriched with milk, heavy cream, butter, egg, milk power, and quite a lot of sugar - which makes it richer than most Asian soft sandwich bread recipes, pushing toward brioche territory. The finished loaf is very tall, very soft, rather rich tasting.

I was inspired by a loaf made by breadmakingbassplayer that sounded very good. I began by calculating a 75% hydration dough. With the water content from the scallions, and the addition of some sesame oil, I'm not sure how much higher than that it wound up. Parchment paper and rice flour are your friends in a case like this.

Despite failing to post about it, I'm still at my quest for a perfect, hole-y ciabatta.  The last two weeks were interesting, to say the least.  

If you recall, two weeks ago I baked Craig Ponsford's ciabatta (a la Maggie Glezer), with results that were just about perfect.  Last week I tried to replicate the experience.  First, the formula and proceedure:

Biga:

Since we got back from Hawaii a few weeks ago, we’ve been craving Hawaiian sweetbread.  When we were there we bought a local bakery’s cinnamon sweetbread, pull-apart buns coated with cinnamon sugar--not gooey sticky buns, just barely sinful.

Rediscovering Waldkorn bread this week. I can only take credit for mixing it all up and shaping it as tight as I managed this time around; I'm using a "soezie mix". I'm trying to break down what is in there to make it THAT dark a loaf. Any help in deconstructing is appreciated. And no, alas, the flour formula is not on the bag... Crumb pics to come when the loaf has cooled down enough (after seriously ripping a beautiful bread to pieces I have found the patience to properly cool at last)

I had a bunch of fresh blueberries in the fridge and a bag of KA Sir Lancelot high-gluten flour that had been sitting in the pantry for too long, so naturally, I decided to try making blueberry bagels. There were a few considerations beforehand:

-would the blueberry flavor be concentrated enough from just fresh blueberries?

-would I be able to knead whole berries into the dough, or would I have to find some other method of incorporation?

-how should I adapt my usual go-to bagel formula?

Now that summer's almost here, really nice berries are popping up at the market. Last week, I bought two large boxes of strawberries, and a large box each of blueberries and raspberries. I did a decent job eating them, but they were starting to go overripe, so I decided to make a summer berry pudding. It's one of my favorite easy desserts because there's not much precision required. The recipe is pretty foolproof, and you can substitute any berries you like. The only requirement is that you have some good bread and enough berries to make plenty of sauce.