Blog posts

. . . just rolled in to flavour town!  This is one of the nicest tasting loaves I have ever produced.  I am totally hooked on sourdough now, am using dabrownmans excellent SD methods of work and am achieving the best tasting bread I have ever baked!  THANKS dabrownman, you are DMAN!

My next project is to re-bake all of my favourite recipes dman style in sourdough!

60 grams 100% levain

195 g bread flour

30 g whole wheat

45 g organic rye

210 g water

Got some fresh blueberries this past week and decided to make fruit tarts. Finally got back to the Bouchon book. Made the pate sucree and pastry creme. The pate sucree came out great. Was easy to make and handle during the roll-out. The pastry creme was flawed. The book says to use 83g of custard powder for the small batch, DONT! I did some research and feel they transposed the numbers wrong. Use 38g for a small batch and 46g for a large batch. I have not tried the chocolate pastry creme yet. Not sure if the numbers are right.

Last week it was time to bake again time to use the culture that i look after at work, to be in readiness for an evening class "Introduction to Sour Dough"

The dough itself was the simple 3:2:1 Flour : Water :Culture the only difference was to step up the water by a further 100ml the salt was 2% other additions were Butter 2%,Turmeric powder @ 0.25% i decided on the Turmeric to possibly contrast the Feta cheese @ 4%  and black olives @ 2% 

Certainly getting Figgy with it!

Using up my Figs from Te Mata Figs that I purchased at the Auckland food show yesterday.

Very Figgilicious!!

No yucky preservatives or additives...Just beautiful figs!!

Heaven, Heaven, I am in heaven:)

Made up a batch of Naan bread tonight for my year's first Tandoori Chicken.  I have a recipe for Tandoori Chicken that was given to me from an Indian ex-neighbour years ago and I will never stray from it.  Too good.  First time making Naan this way.  Made it on grill with quarry tiles, preheated to a high heat.  My trick is to pour bit of oil in the drip tray.  The high heat causes flare up, and the flames cause the internal grill heat to go off the temperature gauge charts.  I am sure this is not technically safe, so please do not try it...I am confident

The recipes for both the Pretzel Sandwich Buns and Maple Mustard Chicken Salad appear in the August 2013 King Arthur catalog. The easy to make buns are soft and taste like soft pretzels; the chicken salad is delicious. I roasted one chicken breast and two thighs (both boneless) at 325°F for the meat.

David G

I have baked two breads this past weekend, Whole Wheat Pita, and David’s San Joaquin SD. The whole Wheat pitas, however, were the new favorites after I have finally had success with them.

The whole wheat Pita bread from Peter Reinhart’s (Whole grain breads), and pitas in general have had me intimidated for quite some time. Simply put, they never puffed well even on hot stone, rendering my efforts futile. Not anymore, I learned few tricks from youtube on how to bake pitas and have them puff on stove.

Since my mutant loaf a couple of days ago I have spent great care in both pre-shaping an shaping and the results are much better.  New to sour dough baking on a regular basis I let the first 2 batches proof for an hour and scoring was most difficult.  I suspected over proofing.  On today's bake I proofed the loaf on the right for 50 minutes and it was reasonably easy to score, though I had trouble with the lame and had to use a serrated knife.  The loaf on the left, which proofed longer was nearly impossible to score by any means, so definitely over proofed.

So as all of us who love to make bread, I too, am on the quest to make a perfect baguette.  I've made oodles of variations that are quite good and even great but not "the baguette".  On the same notion I believe there is more than one "perfect baguette".  In fact after working in a few bakeries I've adapted the notion that a well written bread formula can be approached from so many ways.  And in many instances they are all good ways of handling the said formula.  Its in the eye of the beholder and what they are after.

Todays bake was filled with requests…….

Roasted Garlic and Herbs de Provence……...

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Scalded Cracked Wheat and Honey………...