Blog posts

Happy New Year fellow bakers!
It has been a little while since I have posted anything new, but it’s not for lack of baking.  I have a little list of favorites that I have written about before that I keep going back to.

But a few weeks back, Gaetano (inumeridiieri) posted a loaf that inspired me to get back to my two-year-on-again-off-again attempt to reproduce Pane di Altamura.  I have gotten some excellent results the past month to share.

First a big thank you to Ru007 for posting this sourdough donut recipe a while ago. I used your formula exactly and boy did these turn out well!  I scaled the balls to 85 grams, roughly the size of a golf ball and they ended up huge. It took about 5 minutes each in the deep fryer at 375F. After cooking 3, I bagged and refrigerated the remaining 5 dough balls, figuring they will be better fresh. I may also cut the size in half to get a more Timbit sized treat. I just used granulated sugar, sprinkled on and rolled in.

trying something new. Vietnamese baguette. No sourdough. Fun to make and taste like a baguette although they don't necessarily look it! 

Looking forward to some char siu, pickled carrots, pate and cilantro banh mi for dinner. 

We always have pizza on New Year’s Eve, every year ……… for years and years.  But this year we didn’t….. at least not homemade pizza.  We got a take out from Oregano’s and it was good but it just cannot compare to homemade pizza – sorry to Oregano’s.

It has been 3 weeks since we last baked a loaf of bread proving that IBBA (Insane Bread Baking Addiction) can be controlled to some degree – but I did bake some rolls 2 weeks ago -  for Christmas / Hanukkah.  We never did get around to baking fruitcake and panettone for the holidays either…..Lucy is getting pretty lazy if you ask me

No batards were harmed during the making of this blog entry.  All were proofed in a couche under retard.  Considering how much time I spend on baguette baking, I'm surprised at how many batards were part of the year.  A partial list...

Son of SJSD, Alfanso Style with 75% hydration mixed flour Levain.

Forkish Field Blend #2 with 75% hydration mixed flour Levain.

Unrelated to this loaf, I am planning on baking a loaf for a coworker who has some wheat issues. She's had modest success tolerating a very long-ferment sourdough loaf that I prepared for her (taking pains not to incorporate any unfermented flour along the way), and I'd like to now try an all-spelt loaf for her as an experiment. Thus, I needed to split off my wheat-based starter into a spelt variant, and rather than waste precious spelt, I thought I would make the most of the transition.

Some time ago I bought about 250g of hemp seed flour and today I made the first attempt to use it. Recipe was simple: 20% wholegrain spelt flour, 9% hemp seed flour, rest was AP flour, hydration 70%, 8% of  starter @100% hydration, 5% white sesame seeds, 2% salt (all bakers percents).

Some time ago I promised alfanso to make baguettes once and they are here. Not really very nice, but not too bad at all for the first time. Definitely I have to learn baguette scoring.

I used Alfanso's recipe with a small change that I was using 100% hydration starter, the rest was the same.

I was baking them in my steam oven at 230 dC and high steam for about 25 minutes and at the beginning I dropped 2 ice cubes on a hot skillet to generate a steam blast.

Internet blows at the new house so I started reading about sourdough in november, ordered bunch of shit from amazon and started baking mid december.  

last two batches i've been mixing einkorn into the wholewheat/bread flour and adding stuff like chestnut puree/raisins/nuts.  came out pretty good!

Here are some loafs I've pulled out of the oven from the latest to the first loaf of bread i ever baked.