Blog posts

Hello, everyone! It's been ages since I posted something. Nothing much or new happening (in terms of baking) lately except that I am still learning to bake a lot and experimenting some recipes. I have had some fair share of success on baking my sourdough bread and pastries too of late. Though, the fact of not being able to make a decent looking piece of Baguette disturbs me a great deal.

Happy Easter! I baked this Neapolitan Easter bread (Casatiello), published in the New York Times by Yotam Ottolenghi. Basically, it is a yeast bread dough wrapped up with meats, cheeses, herbs and eggs fillings, for the break fast picnic eaten the day after Easter. It was a fun bake since whatever leftovers you had on hand, you can roll them up tightly, like a cinnamon roll. It's easily adaptable to accommodate any filling ingredients. And you won't be getting your fingers all sticky and gooey. There is no glaze on the bread.

Hi all!

I saw this Bread from Ian "isand66" and could not resist to bake it!

The loaf (Ian's design is better ;-))

The crumb ...

   Spring is finally here so it was time to make some rolls to use for grilled burgers.  I used a mix of fresh milled spelt and whole wheat along with some KAF bread flour.

I wanted to see if I could get some maple flavor in these so I added a dark 100% maple syrup in the levain and in the main dough.  Well, that achieved nothing except making the levain triple in size from the natural sugars in the syrup.  It did add a nice sweetness to the rolls but not enough to be over the top.

Happy Easter to everybody!. 

Alleluia!

Joze

We have Cousin Jay coming over on Saturday for smoked prime rib.  Anytime he comes over it is a special day for sure and it is the end of Passover and the beginning of Easter so a special dinner is required and a special bread to go with it.

Rye with Caraway seeds with 125% hydration all rye levain.  After a few vagabond months, I'm stationed back home until the summer comes around.  Just back from my now annual Spring pilgrimage to the Central Valley in CA for a week with old friends and I headed, once more, down to Fresno for another delightful afternoon with David Snyder and his wife.

In a never-ending quest to improve, for the next couple of loaves I decided to make some changes.  The loaf above had the water upped just a bit to 73.5%, because I wanted to try making an even more airy crumb.  I also had a mix of flours 50/50 of KA bread flour and Wegmans unbleached all-purpose, simply because I ran out of BF. :-) 

So, my scale finally arrived, and I got a banneton for proofing as well. I've been experimenting a bit, and I think I finally got it. Since all the folks here were so helpful, I figured I could contribute by sharing my results. Would really love to hear your comments too!  You can see the final product in the photo above.

The recipe:

In the morning, take starter from the fridge and feed it 1:1:1, i.e. equal amounts of starter, water, and flour.  Cover and let it sit in a warm place for 6-8 hrs.

When I heard about breads made with spent grains - leftovers from beer brewing - I was fascinated.

How interesting! But, where on earth, could you come by those mashed grains, unless you worked at a brewery? We have two micro-breweries in Bar Harbor, so I left a message, asking whether I could purchase a small amount of their spent grains.

The sobering answer: the mash goes to the (dogs) hogs. All sold to pig farms - sorry!