Blog posts

While staying at Island of Hvar in middle Dalmatia I got inspired by big fields of lavender to give a try to a lavender bread. Right now there is a crop of lavender going on and when you pass such field the smell of lavender is simply amazing. Island of Hvar is known to be the island with most sunny days in whole Dalmatia what provides a very good natural conditions for growing lavender, wine and olive trees.

Country Bread - yeast activated at 72F, 100F, and 130F (left to right) - July 8, 2017

The inspiration for this one came from Lechem's loaf. I did very minimal changes to it. Basically, I only changed the amount of levain to accommodate my 80% levain.

Recipe:

1. Toast 40 g pecans.

2. Soak 50 g cranberries in 30 g water.

3. Autolyse all above with 335 g unbleached flour, 80 g fresh milled Selkirk wheat, 262 g water, and 18 g orange blossom water.

4. Mix in 10 g seal salt and 117 g of 80% levain.

I took my inspiration for this loaf here. I changed it slightly and used my usual way of making bread but I was not aware that cinnamon impeded the yeast action! My bulk rise took 9 hours at cool room temperature! I never did get the dough to double but it rose to about half again the original volume. After shaping and putting it in bannetons, I let the loaves rise for an hour on the counter before putting them in the fridge for the night.

After many months being so busy finally the time of holidays/vacations arrived. Again this year we (my wife, our dog and me) are having great time on Island of Hvar in middle Dalmatia in the Adriatic Sea.

In my blog last week I mentioned that I had the levains all ready to go and was frightfully confident that the dough would be cooperative with my intention of a relaxing mix day...

Well - the weather decided to go in to random mode, and we had storm fronts rolling in from all directions fighting with high pressure fronts that thought we should be clear and sunny instead.  It's a lousy shot (I'm a lousy photographer), but here's one of the cloud fronts traveling by:

I really like making porridge breads - they allow the flavour of whatever grain is in the porridge while keeping the texture of a nice wheat-based sourdough. Creamy, moist, chewy and with a nice crust. I especially like using rye flakes this way as rye flour can be notoriously difficult to work with and really changes the texture of the bread.

Nearly murdered my KitchAid to make this shreddably fluffy pillow of brioche. It's around 40% butter, leavened with a combination of sourdough levain, poolish plus a bit of dry yeast. IT SMELLED LIKE PEACHES ???? AFTER MIXING and the dough was literally a pillow. I made a mini loaf and a bunch of brioche tartlets (lemon parmesan thyme, mango pistachio cardamom, blueberry lemon curd).

Back home now, with all my baking equipment, so I thought I'd re-create the no-measure bread I made on holiday last week, only measuring stuff this time so I could bake it again, and scale it for different sized batches. The original adventure is recorded in my blog post here.

This time, just for something a bit different, I made the poolish with white whole wheat flour. It's 100% hydration, 100 grams each of flour and water and about 1/4 tsp of active dry yeast.

What I ate for 6 days in Western Europe

A paper I wrote about baking was recently accepted by an artificial intelligence conference in Trondheim, Norway. I decided to make the most of my trip and visited as many countries as possible in my 6 days abroad. Below I have provided a list of the foods I sampled:

Day 1

Germany

Rosinenschnecke (Pain aux Raisin)

France

Roggenbrot mit Sauerteig, Broetchen (Sourdough Rye bread with roll)

Crocque Monsieur Grilled Cheese with cured meat) + Salad + Rose aux Provence (