Blog posts

My attempt at Hamelman’s Hot Cross buns from his Bread book. I made these on previous Easter’s and they were always well received. One of the reasons I like his version is because the crossing paste is extra tasty. It is made with butter, sugar, egg, vanilla, lemon zest and flour. I am not going to post his recipe so buy the book. The recipe makes enough paste for four dozen buns and since I was only making two dozen and I didn’t have a smaller tip, I piped it on thick.

Brioche Bread

Wonderful smell in the house - Happy Easter to everyone.

I’ve been baking a lot of milk breads for some time developing the formula to the point that I’m quite happy with it.  So now I’d like to see what I can do with a vegan version of a sourdough milk bread.  This is my first try at a vegan version of a 100% whole wheat milk bread.  My favourite non dairy milk is soy milk and I prefer the Asian soy milk rather than the North American ones as they are slightly sweetened without any added flavours like vanilla so it was easy to decide to use this.

Isn't it nice when your baked goods smile at you? :p




These are my 'happier' hot cross buns this year

Tangzhong
100g milk
20g all purpose flour

Dough
All of the TZ
165g milk
1 large egg
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
70g SD discard
55g sugar
6g orange zest
445g all purpose flour
6g salt
3g instant yeast

My sourdough Hokkaido milk bread dough is highly versatile, here is a 50% whole wheat version that I’ve spiced with cinnamon, allspice and nutmeg and added mixed candied peel and currants. These are soft, fluffy and not too sweet, they’ll be perfect for breakfast on the long weekend.  This formula uses a stiff sweet levain once again to avoid a sour tang to the bread.  The final pH measured from the baked bun is 5.02 which is remarkable especially considering the 20 hour long cold retard the dough received.

For years, I worked with various mixes of flour (bread, AP, spelt,  whole wheat, rye) and I used one starter, and it worked on all mixes. It was slow - about the speed indicated in the books on baking.

More recently, I have moved to all whole wheat (with 2% rye & 2% bean flour), all the time, and I have seen my fermentation/final rise times go way down (considering the dough temperature.)

Incredibly soft and delicious. It's slightly sweet, slightly acidic and very gently bitter from things that I used to make it.

Grandma style, which means non measuring or using volume units. With some normal and some a little weird add ons: old flour scraped from board and dried, old oats and poppy seeds that fell off a previous loaf, some roasted grains of rye, barley and wheat, a big handful of rye altus, dried apricots,  prunes and walnuts. Leavened with stiff rye preferment,  while store bought whole wheat (I think it was Gold Medal) is in the dough

I have a bottle of wine that isn’t my favourite so decided I’d try to make vinegar from it as a fun experiment.  Started on March 28/22.

The easiest method of making vinegar from wine is by using unpasteurized apple cider vinegar which has the mother in it.  Apparently it is Acetobacteraceae that metabolizes alcohol into acetic acid in an aerobic reaction.  If one uses unpasteurized apple cider vinegar the mother should be alive and well.  By adding this to the wine the Acetobacteraceae will convert the ethanol into acetic acid.  

I made a dough using some of the home milled Red Wheat @ 50% along with a good bakers flour and a bottle of Porter when i was having a baking day with my daughter and her friend Lilly. They came out rather well and i was very impressed with my daughter's oven that gave a nice crusty bake!