Blog posts

How about the Anglo-Italian fusion for Easter: a combination of hot cross buns and panettone? Yes, I know, there's the properly Italian colomba di pasqua and I've made it too, but my bunettones are just a bit of fun.

I used a sourdough starter but didn't go through the faff of lievito madre, getting up at four in the morning etc., like I did back at Christmas time. Not orthodox, but ordinary, lively 100% wheat sour starter seemed to work well.

after seeing some lovely cut/stencilling by ana a.negra, I decided to try it myself.  I've always wanted to make sea weed bread, so I thought I'd do the two together. 

I live near the coast where dulce seaweed is harvested, so I swapped some bread for fresh seaweed from the local cockle man.  The seaweed took two days to dry in my oven, then I blitzed it into flakes.  I've made a low hydration dough here as I thought the cutting will be easier, which it was.

20% Canadian white

65% bacheldre a local flour 12% protein

5% light rye

that are perfectly ripe.  Made a tomato, fresh basil, cracked black pepper, tangerine balsamic vinegar, manzanilla olive oil, mini fresh mozzarella ball and parmesan cheese salad.

This is my second attempt at a similar bread.  I wanted to use my new Apple/Orange Yeast Water to make a Levain for this bread and not use any other sour dough levain.  When I did this a few weeks ago I didn't let the levain ripen long enough and the dough didn't develop correctly.  This time I let the levain go for a good 12 hours and then refrigerated and used it the next day.  No problem this time with developing the dough correctly.

I loved the taste of this bread so decided to make it the way it was originally written by Hamelman as much as possible (except for the addition of yogurt) since I am doing this by hand and he used a mixer. I also used some vital wheat gluten to replace his high gluten flour which I am guessing is around 15% protein. To do this, I found the niftiest online calculator. 

http://flourmath.bradfordrobertson.com

With my brother and sister-in-law in town I baked a few semolina-fennel seed-golden raisin-toasted pine nut baguettes (that's a mouthful - in more ways than one) and then followed that up with a batch of Vermont SDs.

This bread should be my first post. I don’t know how I could post any other recipes before this one is even shared.

Though I enjoy a stack of pancakes for breakfast from time to time, I’m not one with a sweet tooth and would almost always go the savory route for my bread. The combo of sesame and cheese is a match in heaven and is undoubtedly my all-time-favourite. If you’ve ever had sesame crackers or breadsticks with your cheese board before, you know what I mean.

A couple more of my current favorite multi-grain sourdough breads. These were baked in cast iron Dutch ovens.

Happy baking!

David

I have been exploring the delicious world of porridge breads lately but today I decided to venture away from that...sort of.  When I first started baking bread, apart from the therapeutic value of the process, my motivation was primarily nutritional.

A Johannesburg filling station keeps passing motorists entertained with its daily ration of aphorisms.  I think this one is worth repeating, even if it's not new!