Blog posts

I made brioche buns and smaller loaves of sourdough recently. Smaller bakes are fun!

Instead of my usual braided loaves, the brioche with sourdough discard and Tangzhong were made into little buns (or pastries). These were not 2:1 or 3:2 (flour:butter) brioche; 50-70% butter versions. I used just 30% eggs, 30% butter which came out soft and buttery, thanks to the use of Tangzhong and Kamut. The second batch used 25% of each.

Bennie started it with his lemon love! This is a mixed up  crust with YW SD whole wheat and a bit of T65 and the rest AP. Toppings are mozzarella and Parmesan and black olive tapenade with pepperoni and homemade sauce. 

Tomorrow is Pie Day 3.14, what do you have prepared to celebrate? Instead of a double crusted pie I decided to bake a tart today (Pie day minus 1 = 3.13 ). The lemons looked really good yesterday at the market so decided upon a lemon tart which uses a pate sucrée pasty.

I like an extra lemony and tart curd so my curd has a bit more lemon zest and a bit less sugar than I usually see in the lemon fillings in recipes.

For the pastry - pate sucrée

Two experiments this weekend.  One I've been wanting to try and one a friend asked me to make.  I"ll try to get a more detailed method loaded in the next day or two.

I am presenting this bake of my 3.0 version of this bread to show how it does without any added VWG.  As I suspected the VWG really helps with getting the super tall loaf that I love seeing.  Without the VWG, the loaf is a normal profile, neither tall nor short.  I’m not mad at it.  It’s good to know that VWG isn’t absolutely required.

Hi Community,

First off, what a fantastic resource and community y'all are. Newbie here, and I almost instantly fell down the Panettone rabbit hole. I started in January and finally, FINALLY, this week I have a panettone that is beginning to resemble the image I had in my mind. I read so many past blog posts (especially Susan and MWilson) and consulted many, many recipes online, and even stumbled thru Italian sites with my 2nd grade-level Italian literacy.

I had mentioned previously about converting my Challah recipe that I have been making since the mid ‘70’s to YW. I posted pics of the Apple/Raisin YW that I used on the YW topic . . Freshly fed and fermented it did an outstanding job. The fragrance is intoxicating. Crumb shot in a bit. 

In a small jar I put a handful of raisins, a handful of dried sd rye cubes and some lukewarm water. I let it ferment in a lukewarm spot for 3 days. Third day evening, I added water to volume of 650ml. I fed it with a couple tablespoons of rye flour. In the morning I added more flour, to the consistency of pancake batter.  It fermented about 5 hours, then started collapsing.  At this moment I made the proper dough using all purpose flour and salt.  Didn't add anymore water. Bulk ferment was 2 hours, final proof probably around 1 hour.

Dan's recent questions, and all of the recent discussions about yeast water have made me think of ways of making it more reliable.

To learn more about concentrated lactic acid sourdough (CLAS), please see here and here. 

Easy peasy Kimchi!

Quarter the Napa (~1.3kg) and loosen/separate each layer.