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I am not a baker. I am a chef, and therefore I got my own ideas how food can work.

I wanted a cinnamon bagel fine crumb with a nice tough crust. No egg, butter, milk or oil.

Right I did do a little research about lye, baking soda, potato water, blanching, rolling and oven temperature

Make potato water:

• 180 gr nice golden potato can be any like annabel or agria
• 1 ltr water

cook the potato, no salt. cool down and blend

make a starter by mixing:

But you might cry and these are simply soooooooo yum, words escape me.

Mmmmm

I have been twiddling round with sweet doughs and Chelsea bun typey things for years..

This is my favourite…

As you can imagine,  these went…

Seriously, I turn around and GONE!!

Caramely swirly

Several days ago I happened upon a disconcerting video about wheat. The audio-based video consisted of a one-hour interview with Dr. William Davis, author of the book Wheat Belly and a renown cardiologist who claims that the habitual consumption of wheat-based products is unhealthy.

Saturday was pickup day for Pioneer Valley's grain CSA. I am really impressed with the variety and quality of the grains and beans we got. I'll do a more extensive post on what we got later, but here's the first cooking effort. I used the same recipe from my blue corn cornbread entry, using Red Llamas Wheat and Mandan Bride Corn.

That’s if they make it that long.

Luckily I made these in the afternoon and they are going to be our burger buns…

Should I have said ” Oooouch man?’

I was trying to remember what Oor Wullie said….

Kiwiburger…

Greedy fingers will be looking at pinching buns until dinner!! but if they do…. they will be starving at dinner…

A lovely simple recipe to make and relatively fast in the yeasty beasty world. 

I put my mostly risen bread in the refrigertor for 23 hours to let it ferment and develop sourness.  But to no avail.  My bread was bland and not sour at all.  I have tasted my starter 12 hours and 24 hours after feeding and it has a complex and sour taste.  I don't know why this didn't transfer over to my bread.

It's around this time of year that I tend to make rye bread of some kind more often than not. For me the flavour and texture of a hearty rye bread helps to dispel at least some of the cold and damp days we have and will continue to have for the next few months here on Vancouver Island.

While there has been some baking going on here, most of it has been very pedestrian; basic stuff like sandwich breads and pain au levain.  With our kids and their kids coming home for the Thanksgiving weekend, an opportunity arose to inject some variety.  On the day before Thanksgiving, I made 2 dozen oat-wheat pan rolls.  On the morning of Thanksgiving, I made cloverleaf rolls.  

Time for some of the FAMOUS Irish soda bread!!

I have been meaning to make it for ever but keep finding other things to distract me...

All equally delicious and I can't say no!!

This is a fruity one, given my pennant for fruity breads:) but you could easily make it plain .

The latest Baker's Catalogue from King Arthur Flour has a recipe for “Swedish Tea Ring.” I usually just scan these recipes and go on looking for new toys, but this one caught my eye. The sub-caption described it as a “decadent cinnamon roll in the shape of a ring,” but the formula seemed the least “decadent” of any pastry I could recall – 3 1/2 cups of flour, 1/4 cup sugar, 1 egg, no shortening! Of course the filling had butter, but still … I thought maybe this was an editing error. I did a quick internet search for other Swedish Tea Ring recipes.