Blog posts

I've had Daniel Leader's Living Bread book for a couple of years now but have baked scarcely any (one?) of the breads that it features.  One reason for not having dived into it enthusiastically is that I am, admittedly, a rather pedestrian baker whereas many of the breads in the book exemplify a high degree of the baker's craft.  Another reason is that some of the breads are in the "That's cool but it isn't what I want" category.  And, a number of the breads call for ingredients that, here in northern Michigan, range between exotic and Unobtanium.  Since I'm cheap

Hi friends!

Last time, I shared how I bake lean bread in my beloved Walmart toaster oven. Today, I will show you how I use it to bake enriched bread. The loaves you see are sesame milk bread, made with 60% milk, 8% butter, and 8% sugar. I bake them "naked" — without the graniteware roaster — in a black tin and a light-colored tin, respectively. Each dough weighs around 500g for the 9x4x4 tin.

Here’s my process:

Sorry to anyone who received weird emails notifications today. I was doing a bit of housecleaning, which triggered comment notifications that I was not expecting.

This is worthwhile opportunity for me to share that I am finally working on upgrading migrating this site from the current software it is running on. 

This is Maurizio Leos best sourdough recipe but with 80%-ish water instead of 85%. My flour actually probably could’ve taken the 85%

Mix 822g flour, 64g ww flour, and 650g water and let autolyse 1 hour.

Add 151g levain, 17g salt, 85g waterish - I didn't measure, just added reserved water by feel.

Fold every 15 minutes 3 times then every 30 minutes 3 times. Total bulk 4 hours. Shape (no preshape) and proof in fridge overnight.

Things have cooled down just a bit the last few days, enough to make cooking more pleasant. This loaf is based on Trailrunner/Caroline's WW YW Pullman 13" bread. As Caroline mentions, this is a spin off of Danayo's 1-rise only bread. I scaled Caroline's recipe down a bit for use in my 9 in Pullman pan, and made just a few substitutions:

235 gm AP (Bob's Red Mill organic)

235 fresh milled Central Milling hard red spring wheat

I doubled and baked the 8 small loaves and an 8x4 pan not quite full. 

2 T soft butter

1/2 c white sugar 

1 large egg

1/2 c light brown sugar 

2 c fresh milled Purple Straw soft red wheat

1/2 t baking soda 

1tsp baking powder 

3/4 tsp salt

1 1/2 tsp mixed spices - I ground cinnamon. Allspice, clove and nutmeg

1 c sliced pre moistened dates

zest of one orange

3/4 c oj

Haven’t made this since 2018. What was I waiting on ???? This was originally posted by the prolific poster/ baker Shiao-Ping. It’s the most flavorful rich incredible bread. I made my own adaptations so will write it up below. 

It’s very easy to inoculate your current YW with banana slices. There’s also info online to start a YW with banana from scratch. I just add a new fruit to some of my current active YW I don’t start from scratch. 

The ultimate test of a newly created formula is replicability. 

Today's yield (Double batch)

1 loaf pan bread 

11 Hot dog buns 

 Regarding the formula process.

I made a version of this a week before and completely over-hydrated the dough and ended up with an unintended super sized ciabatta :).

This is another experiment with trying to find the right timing for bulk fermentation using mostly fresh milled flour. It ended up pretty good but still a little over-proofed.