Blog posts

I doubled and baked the 8 small loaves and an 8x4 pan not quite full. 

2 T soft butter

1/2 c white sugar 

1 large egg

1/2 c light brown sugar 

2 c fresh milled Purple Straw soft red wheat

1/2 t baking soda 

1tsp baking powder 

3/4 tsp salt

1 1/2 tsp mixed spices - I ground cinnamon. Allspice, clove and nutmeg

1 c sliced pre moistened dates

zest of one orange

3/4 c oj

Haven’t made this since 2018. What was I waiting on ???? This was originally posted by the prolific poster/ baker Shiao-Ping. It’s the most flavorful rich incredible bread. I made my own adaptations so will write it up below. 

It’s very easy to inoculate your current YW with banana slices. There’s also info online to start a YW with banana from scratch. I just add a new fruit to some of my current active YW I don’t start from scratch. 

The ultimate test of a newly created formula is replicability. 

Today's yield (Double batch)

1 loaf pan bread 

11 Hot dog buns 

 Regarding the formula process.

I made a version of this a week before and completely over-hydrated the dough and ended up with an unintended super sized ciabatta :).

This is another experiment with trying to find the right timing for bulk fermentation using mostly fresh milled flour. It ended up pretty good but still a little over-proofed.

I’M SORRY! I used the soft wheat had both out for two different projects. Corrected . 

Amazing, light as air. And the flavor! My husband is the biscuit man expert! We have the best formula ever thanks to a blog that I will link. Get your buttermilk icy cold. Melt the butter ( use WAY less butter than folks think you should) stir into the icy buttermilk and voila. No cutting no overworked dough. Perfection. 

Will update with formula if you are interested. C

I’m back at work for a couple of weeks covering a few of my old colleague’s practices for them while they are on vacation.  Working interferes with my baking and other retirement activities but at least I make a bit of extra money and keeps my mind fresh.  I wanted a quick bake of something to bring to work with me, it seems it is expected now, so a quick loaf/cake came to mind.  I was in Chinatown the day before and picked up a couple of pounds of purple sweet potato with this loaf in mind.

Adapted from TX Farmers formula which she in turn adapted from Laurels Bread Book. It’s simply outstanding and easy when you remove all the mixer stuff and follow the lead that was started of hands mostly off the dough and let time do the work. 

We don’t care for the shreddable crumb instead we like the cake- like fine crumb. So enough about that here’s my variation on a classic. 

Levain build: 

26g stored starter

43g H2O

I have been having a problem with starters for almost a year now, which has resulted me giving up sourdough baking in general. Given, I once said that I was not happy unless something is rising in my kitchen- like reading a good book.

Rarely posting unless there's a change or something new.  I've baked Mr. Hamelman's Vermont SDs as my go-to bread a ton of times, although almost always as baguettes/long batards, I've never made two 750g batards in a single bake before (as far as I can recall).

My levain was last refreshed almost 3 weeks ago after having been gone for 3 weeks, and we are about to embark on another 2 1/2-3 week journey, so I thought that I'd at least get some mileage out of this aging levain before a next refresh when I return.