Blog posts

Been a while since I had some bagels and have been craving them, so it was clearly time to revisit this wonderful recipe from Peter Reinhart in the Bread Baker's Apprentice. I've done this at least 2 or 3 times in the past always going with the poolish and commercial yeast version. I figured it was time to try the full sourdough version.

RECIPE AND CALCULATIONS HERE

One of the first things I noticed was how much starter/levain I needed. 992 grams! Wait...really....yes really!

Having friends over and wanted to offer fresh bread with our meal. I wanted something that could be easily timed to be ready this morning that I could quickly warm up at dinner time. In order to reduce the work to do today I prepared the levain Thursday night, Friday morning it was ready and I placed it into the fridge. Friday afternoon I prepared the dough and did bulk and placed the dough in the fridge overnight for the cold retard. I don’t usually cold retard these milk breads because I don’t want them to be sour.

This is another variation on my 100% whole wheat SD Hokkaido Milk Bread which has become my favourite sandwich bread.  It is so soft and fluffy for a 100% whole grain bread and keeps so well because of the tangzhong. In this variation, I use the classic 1:5 ratio of grain to milk for the tangzhong but instead of flour I used an organic steel cut seven grain blend of wheat, barley, rye, oats, flax, millet and buckwheat and cook it as I would the tangzhong until it is nicely thickened.  The rest of the procedure is the same as my other SD Hokkaido Milk Breads.

I’ve never made a tart with a chocolate pastry before so decided it was time to try.  The first recipe I tried must have had a typo in it as it was more like a loose batter than pastry dough.  After tossing that attempt in the bin I decided to modify the pâté sucrée recipe that I’ve had success with by adding cocoa powder and a bit of vanilla.  It certainly baked up well so let’s hope it tastes good too.

I came across this video while surfing YouTube.  I love the way she degasses and pre-shapes.  Seems effortless.  Besides that, the black cumin and feta cheese combination intrigued me.  Had to give it a whirl and decided to try it with my Country Blonde sourdough recipe.

Made my latest batch of panettone using the Roy recipe from Chambelland's Sourdough Panettone and Viennoiserie. This is my third attempt, and my first successful attempt, with this recipe. It succeeded very nicely this time, producing a remarkably moist, light, delicate and springy result. 

Fine tuning this bake will perhaps include slight modifications to the second impasto mixing process. This recipe is different from most, in that it includes both yolks and water added after the butter. This is like lightening an emulsion; it made me think of baking mayonnaise. 

This is a sourdough bread made with chakki atta whole wheat flour from costco. What a nice tasting delicious bread 😋

I used my standard grandma style procedure 🙂

Evening:

2 cups rye flour 

2 tablespoons rye starter from the fridge 

Enough lukewarm water to made a relatively stiff ball of dough 

Let ferment overnight,  until you are ready to make dough 

Next day:

All preferment minus a small ball of it (goes back to the starter jar)

4 cups atta flour 

1 tbsp of salt

Going back to earlier on in the year we did some posting on Red wheat which is fairly scarce ihere in Australia, and following up on an article that JonJ  noticed in South Africa  managed to track down a local grower here in Western Australia who was very kind enough to gift us several sacks of two different red wheats that he was growing mainly as a crop in his rotation. We have posted some of the resulting breads and everyone has so far been quite impressed,

While bread dreaming about the pages of TFL, I came across a forum about a rye loaf with carrots.  I loved the idea and still had a few pounds of mini winter carrots needing to be used up, so I went for it.  I don't make rye heavy loaves often enough (though I should because I love them) to have a set recipe.  Rather than do the wise thing and research, I did the lazy, middle of the week thing and just made it up as I went along.

300g dark rye flour

300g water

some ground flax seed

some whole fennel seed

50(ish)g leaven

After a few years of consistently baking bread, I finally pushed myself to make an occasion to try making baguettes.  I've partly avoided it because I usually make bread once a week for toast and/or sandwiches during the week and because don't really work well with home baking equipment.  

When I was back home in February, I borrowed a baguette shaped pan from my mom.  With this sitting around, I finally conceded.