Blog posts

 Last week, I got a nice private message from a TFL member who had just made and enjoyed the Sourdough Italian Bread about which I blogged back in 2008. That bread was Peter Reinhart's Italian bread from BBA with the biga converted to a biga naturale, AKA firm sourdough starter.

That message reminded me that in 2011 I developed another “Italian Bread” formula that I actually preferred to the 2008 version. Coincidentally, my Italian class classmates have been harassing encouraging me to bring some of my breads to class for them to sample.

This was my first addition experience.  I thought I would take a bit of risk and go for something savory.  I think this was so tasty!  I added 120g of toasted pecans and 105g of the Tillamok Sharp Cheddar.  I used 125G WW and 675g KA AP flour, 360g of my Levain.  The retard was 8 hours.

This is the Arkatena bread from Bread Matters by Andrew Whitley, except with rosemary instead of fennel, more salt, more heat, steam, an autolyse, some stretching and folding, and a shortcut using my own starter to create a chickpea starter.  The chickpea, aka garbanzo, aka gram flour is the unique feature of this bread.

 Last weekend I was lucky enough to journey back to one of my favorite states Vermont and visit King Arthur Flour as well as some other local attractions.  We enjoyed some great meals at the Norwich Inn and Simon Pearce Glass which blows their own glassware. 

Having been inspired by the plentiful and varied apples available during my trip to the apple festival, I decided to make a bread reflecting the season and celebrating this special fruit.

After last Friday’s bake of 2 different breads from on dough we decided to do only one this week.  We upped the whole grains to 38% from 20%  and used 8 different grains in the home milled portion of the flour.

In keeping with out recent process, we sifted out the 25% of hard bits and used that for the first feed of the multigrain levain and the 2nd feeding was the part of the 75% portion.

We had Owlloween this year.  My daughter and I always carved a traditional pumpkin for each Halloween until she went off to college so the last 4 years no pumpkin carving….but this year she was back and being a Chi Omega we decided to carve a owl in this year’s pumpkin – since owls are something special of all Chi O’s.

Here is 1 of 4 pizzas I made.  This one had cherry tomatoes and basil from the garden.  The nitrate free pepperidge farms jalapeño and Monterrey Jack cheese gourmet grillers added a level of spice.  I made a modified puttanesca Sauce for my pizza.  This was really good.  The boys are Hawaiian pizza guys so they had their own.

     This is very close to the Coffee Potato Sourdough I posted last week but I replaced the coffee with water and replaced the cheese powder with a mix of shaved Asiaggo and Parmesan cheeses and bumped up the percentage greatly.  I also eliminated the balsamic vinegar and added some garlic infused olive oil.

The end result was a bread that was even tastier than the last with a nice open crumb and chock full of cheesy goodness.  I highly recommend you try this one as it makes great sandwich bread and grilled bread as well.