Blog posts

I have been reading with interest the postings by Andy (ananda) about his work with double levain breads.  Until now I had not experimented with them, but I had a fully refreshed rye sour at hand. I have already baked a solid brick of a Russian Black bread with that sour, and whilst licking my wounds I have been looking for something a little less difficult to exercise my sours with.  I'm not sure if double levain falls in that category or not, but at least it is not a 100% rye bread.

Pecan Roll

Cheese Pocket 

Both these pastries were made with the Babka Dough from Inside the Jewish Bakery by Stanley Ginsburg and Norman Berg.

Got to try out my new toy today.  I've been working on this for a couple of weeks and it worked great.  The proof box is temperature controlled with a Johnson A419 controller set to control a small desk top heater placed in the bottom.  The rolls are a soft dinner roll straight dough that can be used for a variety of products.  I am catering a dinner for 100 tommorrow and made over 12 dozen rolls today.  

At last we have a reprieve from the heat and humidity with temperatures almost 10°C lower than what we were experiencing during the week.

The cooler temperatures and comments on previous postings (thanks Janet) have inspired me to bake some wholemeal loaves.

 Gilchesters’ Miche/Boules.

Double-leavened Dough, made as a Sandwich Loaf and a Boule.

Believe it or not, Floyd's Sweet Potato Rolls can be made even better.  And I wouldn't even have known that but for a bit of Thanksgiving serendipity.

My buddy and I are setting up Reinhart's panettone recipe to do 80 medium loaves.  Last year we did the large ones (dont remember how many as there were other loaves done that day). This year we are just doing the panettone and will use  commercial flour in the soaker.  I love playing with all these big quantities, like 7 dozen eggs!  I have a 16-20qt Hobart which make it possible. Will let you know how it turns out!

It seems that all that was required was to step back, breath deep, and allow time to create a little distance.  As I started to bake this again my wife asked "So, what are you baking?".  After I answered she asked "So, what are you going to do different?".  I said "I'm going to bake this like I never saw it before and see what happens."  She just smiled and left me to it.