Blog posts

World Wide Bread Journey - Italian Bread - Pane Pomodoro from The Italian Baker

I made this bread yesterday and it was quite well received. I am happy with the taste, crust, score,and the rise. The crumb seems a little damp but that might just be the amount of olive oil.

I made these rolls for a lil trip to Chertsey QC last week. Usually I make these rolls with a sweet filling like Nutella+espresso or jam. Also, I wanted to try using buttermilk in the dough, and this resulted in lovely soft rolls!

Just sharing my 3rd bake with my new Challenger bread pan. Until recently I've been struggling with steaming in my oven but as you can see I think 'problem solved'!

I'm happy with the crust and flavor but I need to work on the rise - I'll be working with the starter feeding times.

This is my stand-by bread.  One of these days, I need to finalize a recipe and stick with it.  For this one, I eliminated the oat flour and reduced the buckwheat flour.  The sorghum, buckwheat, and barley flours were used for a mash, and buckwheat and oat groats were used in a hot water soaker.

Loaf flattened a bit versus springing, but the crumb turned out nice and moist and fairly open.  I keep wanting to make this a hearth loaf, but it's tricky getting it right with the level of gluten free flours.  I may just start keeping this a pan loaf.

Decided to try to make "traditional sourdough" style bread using CLAS and CY. Mostly standard formula, 25% whole wheat, 75% hydration: https://fgbc.dk/1oiv

I used a week-old CLAS from the fridge, and I pre-warmed it before mixing, like recommended for wheat doughs. It contained 5% of all flour for the bread, like recommended for 1st grade or high gluten flour. I reduced the yeast from recommended just a touch, since I didn't want to open a new packet, so 2.4g instead of 3 g IDY.

Number 2 son and his family are visiting. This is the first face-to-face family contact we have had in a year and a half. It's so nice. It's also an excuse to bake. Here's a sampling of what I've offered ...

Jewish sour rye and Berliner Landbrot

San Joaquin Sourdough Baguettes and Epis

Wanted to try something enriched with CLAS, and followed Rus Brot's interpretation of a 1940 Russian recipe for schneiken, meaning "snails" aka rolls - originally German in origin, as you might have guessed. Here is the formula with minimal instructions, since the video is only in Russian: https://fgbc.dk/1ofj

I give a lot of bread away to my neighbors and so decided to have a bit of fun and create this packaging...and alter-ego...and fictitious city.  All fake, but the bread is the real deal - 

Boomshanka y'all ! 

Continuing my CLAS experiments, made a whole spelt bread with seeds, following Rus Brot's recipe again, with a large/long pre-ferment, and very quick and warm bulk and final proof. Only uses a tiny amount of yeast (0.15% IDY of total flour). Recipe here. Here is my formula https://fgbc.dk/1ode (I used linseeds in place of sunflower seeds, that's what I had; also wanted to finish the last few grams from the bag of spelt flour, so added just a little more in the final dough).