Blog posts

another one from 'the "who kidnapped Rob?" cookbook.'

Adapted from Sarah Owens. I changed the recipe to whole wheat (basically because I wanted to use up some of what I have in my cabinet.) I subbed in violife faux-butter, soy milk, and a flax seed faux-egg for the animal equivalents.

Results:

a fun experiment, but -- 

Inspired by some recipes from the internet I decided to bake a bread with sautéed onions and bacon, twisted in grated cheese for the final proof.

50% white flour

50% Ruchmehl

2% salt

22% whole wheat preferment

80% final hydration

25% (raw) onions (sautéed before incorporating)

25% (raw) bacon (lightly fried before incorporating)

more than enough grated cheese for the "crust"

The shaping was just a gentle twist in a huge amount of grated cheese.

Bulk and final proof at ca. 25-26ºC, baked for 30-32min at 200ºC with steam.

Doughnuts with LM Revisited

While pizza is a twice weekly affair, I wanted to put my ever-improving LM to the test by using it in an enriched dough. I cast an on eye over my blog where I found the recipe for doughnuts. Mentally scaling it down to a more manageable quantity, I opted to do a 2/3rds yield.

My wife found these smoked cherries online, from a company called SMKD, so of course, I needed to try them. They are very smoky tasting, so I didn’t want to go overboard and only used a small amount.

I figured some caramelized onions would be a good complement, along with the fresh milled durum and Butlers Gold whole wheat.

The natural sugars in the cherries and caramelized onions, along with the FMF, really supercharged the bulk, and it probably was a little over-fermented.

I just returned from a trip to Vermont, one of my favorite places. Stocked up on a ton of Vermont cheese and some goodies from King Arthur.

I used a high-content Kerry’s Gold butter in this one. Instead of my usual mix of FMF with durum, I used some fresh-milled Stardust whole wheat and fresh-milled spelt along with some KAF bread flour.

The cheese matched perfectly with the malty flavor of the Guinness, along with a little dark cocoa powder.

I’ve always envied bakers who can effortlessly throw together a rye loaf—no weighing, no measuring—just by feel, like their moms and grandmas did. I’ll probably never be that type, but I love having a simple rye bread template I can grab anytime—something I can whip up with whatever’s on hand or tweak with different add-ins when I’m in the mood for a change.

The blog title is actually short for "Middlings Levain Bread", but it's a bit of a mouthful - read on....

I'm always on the lookout for ways to add more wholegrain to my loaves without reducing loaf volume and crumb tenderness too much. I have tried sift and scald but never been too happy with the result - the scald seems to make the bran tougher to me. I've also tried sifting and reducing the particle size of the bran fraction the bran fraction in a spice grinder to reduce particle size. This is quite effective, but rather messy.

So about a week ago, I was determined to finalise my lean starter formula for baguette practicing as salted bran starter (24:12:1 bran:water:salt), and put it into test. And since my baguette making skill is beyond awful (lol), I thought let's make something extra difficult for the sake of practicing.

I have starter specific problem. My bran starters (both lean one and buttered one) always acting out whenever making contact with glutinous rice. Dough always turn out sticky and melty. But I like it difficult, hoping it will be much easier later on when I handle easier flours.

Continuing with the French tradition and looking for something more ... fancy than a simple boul, etc, I remembered yesterday that I could also bake a "Bordeaux crown". The last time I baked a Couronne Bordelaise (with fresh yeast) it was 3 years ago.

This time I went for a recipe with lievito madre. Actually it was more a freestyle compilation of 2 yeast base recipes (homebaking.at and marcelpaa.com):

10% low extraction rye flour

A few days ago, I wanted to bake a bread with a higher wheat content, but still with a somewhat more intense flavor. Since I had no better inspiration, I choice fell on a French country bread made with Lievito Madre. Or at least my interpretation of a French country bread.

• 20% whole rye flour
• 80% Ruchmehl (or First Clear in the US)
• 2% salt
• 77% overall hydration
• 25% Lievito Madre
• all fermentation at 25°C
• baked at 230°C, not too dark, just until it gets a nice color and a nice thin crispy crust.