Blog posts

I haven't posted here for a while. I bake most weeks once or twice, usually my favorite multigrain sourdough or a Buttermilk-Spelt Sourdough. I always have some San Joaquin Sourdough baguettes available in the freezer, of course.

This week, I baked a batch of sandwich rolls made with Medium Vienna Dough from "Inside the Jewish Bakery." The plan was to have rolls for turkey sandwiches, but we use these for hamburgers, sausages and tuna salad sandwiches most often.

Now that winter's here (even though they call it autumn still), the wood fired oven is all wrapped up in its waterproof coat and our pizza is made in the kitchen oven.

Lately I've been making pizza in teglia alla Romana as I think it works better than pizza Napolitana in a domestic oven.

I've been wanting to make a rye bread for a while to change things up a bit, and finally got to it today (and yesterday.)

I really liked Benny's version of Eric's deli rye (pretty sure this was part of a CB), so I decided that I would follow Benny's post HERE.

From the Russian grocery store in Carmel, IN.

Monastyrsky dark rye bread:

Monastyrsky label:

 

Monastyrsky top and end:

 

Monastyrsky side:

 

Nov 20, 2021.

Went shopping at a tiny Russian grocery store in Carmel, the suburb just north ot Indianapolis. I got some rye flour from Lithuania, a Russian salt/spice/herb blend, 2 loaves of different kinds of rye bread (made in the Chicago IL area), and a Russian sweet cream cheese spread.

Bread and cheese spread in next post.

Had the opportunity this weekend to make a couple of loaves that I've been wanting to try.  First time breads are SO MUCH easier when you have a detailed method to follow, and I certainly have to tip my hat to Gavin for his explanation of Debra Wink's 100% WW loaf and David for the detailed method of his Jewish Sour

Why Borodinsky Bread?

I've been wanting to make a rye bread but was a little shy due to my concerns about heaviness and bitterness. I first encountered deli style rye probably at a diner when I was a teen. I wanted something darker, like pumpernickel I've had (although I realize it was probably a cheater pumpernickel using cocoa, coffee and molasses). For the past month, I've been incorporating some helpful scalding, sprouting and malting techniques into my ugly baguettes to develop those skills.

I have been making a starter and it was doing okay i think. I wasn't being very rigid with it, but it was living and smelled amazing. I am currently trying to create bread with it. I have low hopes as of the stage of mixing it into dough as it just seems off but I will update this when I get closer to the end.

A few hours later... 

I wanted to try this recipe again but with more of the porridge and cooked a bit longer. I increased the porridge to 15% and cooked it with half milk and water. However, in order to keep the porridge moist during cooking, an unspecified about of water was added. The porridge is kept at room temperature covered until the next day.

I’m a bit out of practice making pastry. I usually only bake a pie when we have friends over for dinner. So with the pandemic it has been a while since I made one. For this pie I decided to try Kate McDermott’s all butter pastry from her book Art of Pie.

Traditional Art of the Pie All-Butter Dough

An all-butter crust is not as flaky as a butter and leaf lard crust, but the flavor can’t be beat.

FOR ONE DOUBLE-CRUST PIE OR TWO SINGLE-CRUST PIES

INGREDIENTS

2½ cups (363 grams) all-purpose flour, unbleached

½ teaspoon (3 grams) salt