Blog posts

Here's my result, the edges got a little misshapen due to the towel in my banneton, and the parchment paper in the dutch oven, I was trying to follow the directions as close to the letter as possible for my first attempt. 

I didn't get consistently giant holes like everyone else seems to, but that's ok, the bread tastes great, and I now can use it for grilled cheese sandwiches without worrying about setting off the damn smoke detector.

My wife scans King Arthur's recipes about once a month. She found this recipe recently, and asked me to bake them. I've learned not to say "No", but I was afraid she would be disappointed. I've not been very successful making scones in past times. They'd come out dry and dense. Consequently, I've not made them in years.

Some days you're the hydrant.

This one was a dog day. Baguettes with poolish from Hamelman, but a little bit wetter. This baguette stuff is tricky.

It is Friday and pizza was in order. I wanted to try a different crust from last time . I made up a batch of Sullivan Bread dough yesterday. This AM it was full of bubbles. I divided it into 4 pieces and tossed them with Durum flour and placed them in containers in the fridge. At 3 PM I took two out, just as we got back from our 25 mi bike ride. At 5 PM I put the oven on with the steel in place 6 " below the broiler. Temp set to 550. At 5:45 I turned on the broiler to high/550.

I again used my YW/ SSD levains to make a pulla dough. Having chocolate butter cream and cinnamon sugar ITJB, sliced almonds and chopped hazelnuts on hand, I rolled the dough out as a babka. The Kranz variation as I Googled, involves cutting the rolled up babka in two and twisting the stands together. Then I folded it into a loaf pan. Oh my!

Happy baking, Brian 

This would sort of be our everyday sandwich bread if we had one t least one with a crumb that doesn’t have bits of seeds, nuts and fruits in it.   We do like bits of stuff in the crumb a lot but we have been working on improving the tastes of Lucy’s take on  Josh’s more whole grain version of Pain Maggione.

Short post

40% Whole Wheat Sourdough

[URL=http://s1292.photobucket.com/user/Steelhead503/media/Baking/32014Bake1_zpse237142c.jpg.html][/URL]

Crumb Shot

I've been craving a little burger action this week and thought why don't I try my hand at baking some buns.  After all, everyone knows that you can't have a good burger with out a good bun.

The Whole Wheat bread on the left has 283 grams of sprouted wheat kernels. The second loaf is Whole Wheat with  Millet. And both loaves contained 100% freshly milled hard Red Spring Wheat from Great River Milling. The flour actually had a bouquet - that's a first. The recipes are from PR's Whole Grain Breads. Both used a delayed fermentation with sourdough ( refrigerated for 18 hours) and followed PR's epoxy directions for the soaker and the sourdough starter.  Sprouted loaf is slightly sour, soft, wheaty and moist.