Blog posts

Happened to be in the Bay Area after Christmas this year for a vacation, and was passing through Petaluma on a weekday, so decided to swing by Keith Giusto Bakery Supply, which is tucked into a corner of an industrial park in Petaluma.

I enjoyed making Injera so much that I thought I would try the Moroccan version. It is much lighter because it uses semolina and plain flour. I also added 3 tablespoons of toasted sesame seeds to the batter.

Moroccans have them with a melted butter and honey sauce or farm cheese. We had them for dinner with soft white cheese and grape tomatoes. This morning we grilled them ever so lightly and had them like pancakes, with maple syrup, cinnamon and lemon. Delicious.

This recipe is for those of you who are experimenting with adding porridges to your dough. You can substitute most any grain into the porridge with good results. The recipe follows the now standard Robertson/Forkish formula for closed vessel baking. The result is a nice, moist and chewy crumb with a solid crust.

Semolina Porridge Bread

Makes 2 loaves of about 1 Kg each

Refresh natural starter at 100% hydration to yield at least 200 gm ( I use 100 gm flour, 100 gm slightly warm water and 30 gm starter)

Those are quickly made and my family loves them , so do I :)

500g strong bread flour

150ml milk

150ml hot water  * just boiled *

100g soft butter * NOT melted * cut into small cubes

1 egg

1 ½ tsp salt

1tsp sugar

2tsp dry yeast

2tsp vanilla extract

Put all your dry ingredients in the bowl of your Stand Mixer with the dough hook attached

Give them a quick mix with the dough hook.

Let the Stand Mixer run on the lowest setting * for me it is 1 on my KMix *

Yeah, I know.  I've posted my version of these SJSD's before.  But I have a new oven (again).  I recently posted my first two bakes with the new oven, the Tartine Country Bread done up as baguettes.  I was a bit perplexed as to how long the baguettes took to bake: 32 minutes at 300g each.  Way too long in my book.  And I wondered whether it was the oven, or me or the dough, or or or...  So I needed to return to a reliable workhorse for a comparison bake.

We have a tradition of doing pizza for New Year’s Eve.  We also have a tradition of making resolutions too.  This year, Lucy’s resolution was to dedicate herself to AI programming so that she could help mankind transition from biological beings to machine ones eventually ….. so that we would have a fighting chance to defend ourselves against future robots that humans will create will eventually turn on us and want to kill us.  Isn’t that precious?

Now I try a new bread from Lutz Geißler and Björn Hollensteiner's Brotbackbuch Nr. 2!

It's looks greit!

Happy New Year!

Yesterday I made three doughs, one based on Bien Cuit's buckwheat fougasse recipe, one tartine-style country bread, and one naturally leavened baguette. All were delicious, but need a little work. 

TARTINE-STYLE BREAD:

This was made with 15% Wholewheat Flour, 18% Liquid Levain (79F/100% Refresh rate/2.5 hours), 82% Water, 2% overall salt. I lost my lame, so I was unable to get a super-clean score (I used a paintbrush as a mount for the razor). Oh well, still looks pretty good, albiet rustic. Crumb picture to follow, I'm not slicing it until supper.