Blog posts

 Yep, NZ Bread.

I can hear you non NZer’s going ‘what’ ??????? What is Rewena ?

It is yeasty beasty people, a NZ bread.

We call it Maori bread or Paraoa bread.

It is made with a starter like sourdough or an Italian Biga but it is made out of Potatoes and flour………..My uncles used to make it and they used to make fried bread too but I can’t remember if the fried bread was made from the rewena, I think not, I can remember a very sticky dough in the fry pan……….. and I will do that one another day.

If youda told me that the fluffiest bread I ever made would be 40% whole wheat, I woulda called you a liar.  But now I believe!

Lots of Christmas treats baked this weekend.

Magic Squares, Cranberry-Pecan Bars, Berlinerkrasner.

Christmas Rose and Tree 2012

We were supposed to be doing this on Saturday, but had to delay as we had such a sad day yesterday having to put our special and much-loved cat Shuffles to sleep, and sort out a suitable burial in Ingram Valley beneath the Cheviot Hills.

Just the thing for Xmas….

Mmmm buttery, flaky brioche…Delicious!!

It is an everyday bread, well the French eat it everyday…

but I have to say I ate this everyday, I would be a porker!!

Don’t get me wrong, it would be VERY VERY easy to eat this daily…

Maybe after a while I would learn moderation????

Not sure if I want to test it….

It's not quite New Years Eve yet, but I figured it was time to try some champagne in a sourdough bread anyway.  What goes better with champagne than some orange juice?  (I hate strawberries so that was not an option!).  I added some dried blood orange peel  to the starter and the final dough to add some nice fruity flavor.

I created a durum semolina starter and used durum flour along with some KAF French Style flour for the final dough.

Im like the guy whose computer guru told him he was too dumb to own a computer. I am starting to supect Im too dumb to attempt to learn to bake.

 tried today to make yeast rolls using a recipes from all recipes. Very simple measure mix let rise spoon dough into cupcake pan let rise again and bake for 10 min.

The last two bakes were a lower and then a higher percentage of whole grains  and more complex that this one at 48% whole grains.   We also used the KA mixer on speed 3 to knead the dough for 8 minutes instead of using French slap and folds and we baked the bread in a DO instead of on a stone with steam.

I was browsing through Fannie Farmer's  The Boston School of Cooking Cookbook, 1918, and ran across a recipe for Boston brown bread. It is a steam cooked bread from a batter. A search through the Fresh Loaf found several posts on this bread, mostly from Maggie Glezer's book, made with a fairly stiff dough.

Farmer's recipe calls for 1 cup each of rye meal, corn meal and Graham flour,  ¾ cup molasses, 1 tsp salt, ¾ tbsp soda and 1¾ cup milk or water (or 2 cups sour milk).

Earlier this week on a rainy day working from home, I fed my starter with 50% dark rye flour and 50% bread flour.  The next morning I made a dough with 10 ounces starter, 11 ounces water, 16 ounces of bread flour, and a teaspoon or two of salt.  All measurements are approximate: this wasn't something I tended to carefully, just a "background process" that I had running while doing other things.