Blog posts

I'd been warehousing Abel Sierra's post of pan de cristal for forever.  But no more.  My first attempt 2 days ago taught me a few things about a few things, and the results, while okay, were tasty but nothing more to write home about nor to write up on TFL.  And so I made what turned out to likely be the corrections necessary.

Well a year and a half into my pie baking “career” I’ve finally made my first apple pie.  I know a lot of people love apple pie, but I hate peeling apples and have no space for a dedicated apple peeler in my apartment kitchen.  However, this apple pie turned out so well I might have to make room.

I followed the Bravetart Apple Pie recipe almost exactly and overall it turned out well.  I used once again the all butter crust recipe from Bravetart however, this time I subbed 40 g of the water for 40 g of vodka to see if it would make the pastry a touch more tender.

I am still working on my skills with sourdough, having had some recent success I thought I see if I can replicate that success.  With this bake I also thought I’d try shaping using a spritz of water on the counter and my hands, unfortunately that didn’t go so well.  I’m not sure why it didn’t work, perhaps I used too much water, that is the most likely cause.  After the shaping didn’t go well with water, I let the blob rest and then reshaped using flour, this went a bit better but not as good as my previous bake.

While looking through the kitchen pantry for inspiration, I came across a bag of Wild Blend Rice made by Lundberg. So I log in to The Fresh Loaf looking for a recipe that uses rice and onions. What do I find? A recipe that I created last November using those very ingredients! ?‍♀️Of course, in this version, I had to tweak a few ingredients and the method. I also changed my usual timing of the Levain due to a family birthday party. 

Recipe

Makes 3 loaves

Dough:

700 g strong bakers unbleached flour

Hi,

I am new to this site.  Just took these beauties out of the oven.  Baking SD now for 5 months with my own starter.  Wonderful website!!!

Definitely not my most attractive bread! This bread was 85% hydration, with 35% T85, 10% rye (never done this before), and 55% bread flour. I added 150g of toasted chopped walnuts which was a lot for my 750g of dough to handle. I did a 12% starter inoculation, but also added 50g of yeast water to the dough. I'm not sure if adding the yeast water really made a difference or not. 

After a not so successful chocolate loaf, I tried to copy the Full Proof baking recipe, but added chestnuts, doubled the chocolate chips, and replaced 30g of water with yeast water. I went the easy route and did just one dough, and not dough A&B as the recipe suggests.  

This loaf was 78% hydration, 90% bread flour, and 10% fresh ground wheat. 

I was poking around in the back of the drinks cupboard, as you do, and came across this bottle of Saltaire Triple Chocoholic stout, a long forgotten thoughtful gift from Jane, my daughter,

It seemed a pity to drink it all at once when I could enjoy it for a lot longer, one slice at a time, so it became the large part of the liquid in a pair of loaves of 40% wholewheat bread.

Here's the breakdown:

a friend told me of this flour available for a brief time at our local supermarket