Blog posts

I've baked this recipe twice before, but this one i wanted to exclude the yeast and extend the bulk fermentation. Actually, this bake was sort of a controlled test that was aimed at verifying whether or not i could bake during my working weekdays, which i'am happy to say: YES, it works!

First day eve, I started feeding my starter one day to creat the levain for the next day;

Second day, when i came back from work i mixed the levain into a dough and retarded the dough after 2.5 hours;

Third day after work, i preshaped, shaped and baked.

Made some Italian Easter bread and everybody helped shape it. I'll have to check on revealing the carefully saved family recipe from a likely long out of print cookbook. I can reveal that it has a nice mix of fennel seeds and lemon zest that I haven't seen in other Easter bread recipes making the rounds.

  After returning from a great weekend at the first ever The Fresh Loaf get together just outside of Boston I ended up with some left over starters that I had brought with me.  I decided to use most of the corn flour/AP starter along with some AP starter to make my next bread.

This one isn't very seasonal at the moment, but I love eating it for breakfast. It's so buttery and soft that I really don't think it needs an accompaniment. The recipe is taken from "non solo zucchero vol.II" where it is called pandoro evolution, but it is very similar to the pandoro a sfoglia from Cresci. 

Main impasto - in grams

sweet starter (50% humidity) 45

dry active yeast 3

very strong flour 179

sugar 36

unsalted butter (soft but not melted) 27

egg 107

salt 3.5

half a vanilla pod 

Compagne is another bread I am recently into...

I just feel so happy when those coupes opened up nicely!!

This is round campagne, and I sprinkled mealy graham flour on the outside.

They gave extra crunchy texture and savory flavor to the crust which I really enjoy.

Here is the oval one!  I like this shot because it looks like A big smile!!  :)

Had a request from my wifes co-workers for some treats so I made some coffee cake with blueberry and and lemon zest.

Cheers,

Wingnut

After seeing Karin’s (Hanseata) great post with her take on Maria Speck’s  Aroma Bread here:  http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/32830/aroma-bread-love-story

We ran out of whole wheat sandwich bread and there is only a crust of sourdough left.  Yikes!  Time to start baking.  Actually I started the San Francisco sourdough three days ago per David Snyder's formula, a very reliable go-to loaf of tangy goodness.  Those were baked first. 

Hey TFLers!  

I'm still getting over the jet lag, but I'm back from Poland.  As all of you in the UK know, March was unusually cold over there this year, so we saw a lot more snow and a lot fewer flowers than we expected. Still, we had a great trip.