Blog posts

Happy New Year!

First bake of the year, Reinhart Basic SD, with KAF BF, Gold Medal AP, and a touch of rye flour. Starter was fed with only AP flour.

Oven spring wasn't what I'd hoped, I think the AP flour had something to do with it.

I immediately refed the starter and made another loaf (it's in the oven as I type this) ... I used similar flour amounts (quite a bit of AP) but this time I let it autolyze for 20 minutes and I immediately noticed a difference in gluten development when I started kneading it with my Kitchen Aid.

It's the second attempt of a French Baguette.

Recipe is via google search that had me land a the "Joy of Baking" youtube channel.

No fancy oven stones, yeast, malt, etc. here, just simple all purpose flour from Aldi, augmented with a little bit of sticky rice flower and garden variety yeast.

For what it's worth, I am pretty ok with how it turned out.

My sourdough version of my croissants and pains au chocolat last year. Again, it was inspired by txfarmer's marvelous SD corissants but I want to make it 100% sourdough and I can't and don't measure precisely. Last year's version made with instant yeast was definitely prettier but this SD one had a couple of mishaps along the way so I can say it was still a successful bake to start the year!

I had to go out of town for a funeral so my usual routine of making dough on Saturday and baking on Sunday didn't work. So a yeast bread with multigrain flour and some black sesame seeds that could be done in one day was what happened. The recipe is loosely based on Forkish's Saturday breads.

Happy New Year fellow bakers!
It has been a little while since I have posted anything new, but it’s not for lack of baking.  I have a little list of favorites that I have written about before that I keep going back to.

But a few weeks back, Gaetano (inumeridiieri) posted a loaf that inspired me to get back to my two-year-on-again-off-again attempt to reproduce Pane di Altamura.  I have gotten some excellent results the past month to share.

First a big thank you to Ru007 for posting this sourdough donut recipe a while ago. I used your formula exactly and boy did these turn out well!  I scaled the balls to 85 grams, roughly the size of a golf ball and they ended up huge. It took about 5 minutes each in the deep fryer at 375F. After cooking 3, I bagged and refrigerated the remaining 5 dough balls, figuring they will be better fresh. I may also cut the size in half to get a more Timbit sized treat. I just used granulated sugar, sprinkled on and rolled in.

trying something new. Vietnamese baguette. No sourdough. Fun to make and taste like a baguette although they don't necessarily look it! 

Looking forward to some char siu, pickled carrots, pate and cilantro banh mi for dinner. 

We always have pizza on New Year’s Eve, every year ……… for years and years.  But this year we didn’t….. at least not homemade pizza.  We got a take out from Oregano’s and it was good but it just cannot compare to homemade pizza – sorry to Oregano’s.

It has been 3 weeks since we last baked a loaf of bread proving that IBBA (Insane Bread Baking Addiction) can be controlled to some degree – but I did bake some rolls 2 weeks ago -  for Christmas / Hanukkah.  We never did get around to baking fruitcake and panettone for the holidays either…..Lucy is getting pretty lazy if you ask me

No batards were harmed during the making of this blog entry.  All were proofed in a couche under retard.  Considering how much time I spend on baguette baking, I'm surprised at how many batards were part of the year.  A partial list...

Son of SJSD, Alfanso Style with 75% hydration mixed flour Levain.

Forkish Field Blend #2 with 75% hydration mixed flour Levain.