Blog posts

One of our Christmas traditions is to have strawberry crepes and bacon for breakfast Christmas morning. Which always results in a whole lot of bacon fat in a tin in the fridge. I've been meaning for some time to try this in bread, and didn't have any baking for customers this week, so this was my chance.

The basic recipe is a fairly simple sourdough:

• 85% bread flour
• 15% whole wheat flour
• 68% water
• 2% salt
• 25% levain (100% hydration)

Just for a twist, I used whole durum atta flour in place of the whole wheat flour.

This is my first venture into baking with Kamut. It won't be my last. Kamut is a copyrighted name for Khorasan wheat which is an "ancient grain" - one of the ancestors of modern durum wheat. Like durum, it is a large berry that is yellowish in color and, when used in high percentages, gives a yellowish color to the bread's crumb. It is claimed that individuals who cannot tolerate the commonly available modern hybrid wheat can tolerate breads made with ancient grains (eikorn, emmer, khorasan).

About 5 months ago, on July 20th, 2017, my partner Jana and I (Mr. Zita) opened our bakery called “Bang Bang” in Siem Reap, Cambodia. The name Bang Bang is derived from the Khmer / Cambodian word “Nombang”, meaning “bread”. We specialize in sourdough breads and cakes, with heavy influences from North America, UK, Germany and France. Why so international? Simply because I’m Cambodian-Canadian and my partner is German-British. ;)

My brother requested some bread to go with Xmas dinner so I went back to my adaptation of MutantSpace's bread and changed the seed combo a bit. This was also the bread that I used to do the experiment with baking in a cold oven with a cold dutch oven or baking in a hot dutch oven in a preheated oven. The wider loaves on the right were the ones baked in the cold combo pot and oven. They spread out more and ended up with a peaked appearance rather than a full rounded one like the loaves done in the hot pot and oven. Either way, the bread had a very nice mouthfeel and was delicious! 

This is a continuation of tweaking Maurizio Leo's Best Sourdough Recipe My first efforts can be found in my blog here.

https://youtu.be/lrkbBruCoPA

https://youtu.be/nOoEgTvmxyM

Merry Christmas fresh loafers! This has been my go to recipe for sandwich bread for some time now. It freezes well sliced and each loaf keeps me for 2 - 3 weeks in sandwich bread. The recipe is a version of Peter Reinhart's recipe for soft sandwich bread and rolls from Artisan Bread's Every Day. I use a natural yeast, a sweet levain at 100% hydration. The current levain is at least three years old.

          Happy Holidays to everyone.  As usual, we celebrated the holidays with family and friends and cooked and baked and baked some more :).

Bought a stand mixer last week so I could start making fancy, pretentious hipster bread.  This is my second loaf; the first one was devoured before photos could be taken.
It's a basic white loaf, elevated by some techniques I absorbed up by watching videos online and picking the brain of a pro baker friend of mine.  The crust is crispy, the interior springy, open-crumbed and delicious, with just enough caraway flavor to add some zing.  I really like this recipe, so I wrote it down--I wanna make it again, you betcha!

I bake infrequently now, but continue to maintain a sweet levain @ 100% hydration. Today was pulla for breakfast in the morning. Second bake, rising is P. Reinhart's soft sandwich bread. It is an bread, enriched by butter, milk and eggs. I modified Mr. Reinhart's recipe to use my sweet levain, which is a sweet version of a sourdough starter. I don't care for the sour taste in my breads.

Beautiful flavour and a nice crumb. A successful Christmas bake! Merry Christmas!!!