Blog posts

I have been going through a bit of a baking drought lately, but on Friday lunch refreshed my starter so that I could bake when I got off work in the evening.  I hadn't planned on anything, but when I got home and found the starter at its peak, I had to act quickly and there was no time for elaborate planning.  Accordingly, I just ad libbed and this is what I did.  

100g mature starter @ 100% hydration

250g water

3g diastatic malt

50g rye flour

Here’s my favorite variation on my favorite bread--the Basic Country Bread from Tartine Bread.   Since it’s now my most frequent bake, I figured I should write up my procedure both for my own reference and the breadblogosphere.

This weekend, I decided to  bake a sweet bread to serve as dessert for our father's day family gathering.  I ho and hummed for a few days over what to bake and finally decided on Reinhart's Chocolate Cinnamon Babka bread from ABED.  What's not to love about sweet dough, chocolate, and cinnamon, right?  Then I thought, "Wouldn't chocolate, cinnamon, AND hazelnuts be even more to love?"  So, that's what I did...  After rolling out the dough, I spread a thin layer of Nutella, sprinkled with the chocolate cinnamon paste, and then sprinkled again with chopped hazeln

Ingredients:

We've been traveling a lot the past few months, and I haven't had many weekends at home to bake. Now, we'll be home for a few weeks, and I can bake more regularly. This weekend, I baked two of my current favorites – the SFBI Miche and Hamelman's Pain au Levain. (See: Miche from SFBI Artisan II - 2 kg. The formula for the Pain au Levain is found in Hamelman's "Bread.")

Oops - another failure

I was trying to make Daisy's Wholemeal Lemon Sourdough (original successful recipe here)

Not sure what particularly went wrong - my assumption is that
a) I left the preferment too long
b) I used slightly unripe starter
c) I left the mixed dough too long for bulk ferment
d) the S&F method didn't work so well for wholewheat as for white
e) I didn't knead enough
f) the gods were not smiling :-)

Double Pains de Campagne, Olive Levain and a “Hardcore Borodinsky”

One large Boule, proved in a banneton, of just over 1300g, and one of 700g, proved in a brotform.

My croissant project is coming along nicely. I have been practicing on croissant/laminated dough for the past couple of months. The results are getting more consistent and predictable.

I usually make the laminated dough and shape few of them into croissants and the rest to something else (for change and variety). This week I made whole wheat laminated dough and made them into chocolate croissant. 

I’ve been giving more attention to cooking than baking lately.   I’m trying to expand my Asian cooking experience, and Thai food and Korean food go best with rice, not bread.  But I did manage to bake some baguettes and a variation on the Tartine Basic Country Bread this weekend.

For some time I have been looking for German bread formulas, although not systematically. Some time ago I came across Meister Süpke's Blog about sourdough, and setting up a German group at my Son's school gave me finally the incentive to try out Mr Süpke's formulas for bread using the "Detmolder Einstufen-Führung" as I agreed to provide the bread.