Blog posts

No, that isn't my batard.

During our recent visit to my brother and wife in Albuquerque, their home baker friend, having seen my postings on TFL asked if I could give him a baking lesson.  Just in case, I also packed up everything to make a few batches of SJSD batards.  Everything except the kitchen sink and my baking deck, that is.

Well a very Merry Christmas to my freshloaf friends who celebrate it! this loaf made my neighbours little girl very happy just now!  The look on her face seeing a whole loaf of pulla made my day.

Happy baking! Ski

I recently when to baking school to learn baguettes. My family just love baguettes such that I must have every morning. I don't think I have problem with obtaining window frame. My main problem is proofing. I do baguettes again today. I do the finger poking test but still the final result of the baguettes is still not round. I am not sure if the baguettes is underproof. Like I says I do the finger poking. The dough stick to my fingers when I do the poking. I proof for abt 1.5 hours. When I was about to bake just now, the dough Bounce back slowly.

People might rightly think ……Who would be making sprouted brioche buns for Christmas when they haven’t made Christmas cookies, fruit cake, panettone or even puff paste rugelach for Hanukkah?  I know it sounds weird but these are special buns for a special Christmas feast that folks from Kansas City don’t know as well as they should.

My last minute (and a first ever) attempt at pandoro: where are the raisins? :-) And of course baked in a totally unorthodox fashion in a panettone tin - didn't get hold of the star shaped one in time.

Good: no orange peel, dough doesn't ever want to collapse, divine toasted and buttered.

Bad: where are the raisins?

Happy Christmas to all the bakers!

I've been experimenting with using chia seeds in my regular "low hydration" sourdough. I tried incorporating them in three ways.

1. Pre-soak 2 tablespoons of chia in 8 tablespoons of water. "Dimple" into the pre-dough along with the levain/starter.

decided to make 3 batches of dough - and really pay attention to my gluten development and shaping.  Each batch was enough for 2 small loaves. I made Ru's butternut squash recipe again, my favourite multigrain and NW sourdoughs potato water SD.  I have made the multigrain recipe countless times but I reworked the recipe using the BBG spreadsheet. 

Finally, I took some time off from baking for customers (at least cut down my baking days) so I have time to do a few more things, like getting ready for Christmas. I figured this was a good time to try the no oven challenge.

I've been thinking of making a fig and walnut loaf for awhile and finally got around to trying it this week. It turned out very well and it's a formula I'd like to tinker with again.

Notes:

I have been working at using a higher hydration dough and went back to the basic country loaf recipe from Tartine Bread. The other day I was preparing to bake and made a leaven and left overnight. I did the drop test when I was ready to start making the dough and was disappointed that the leaven dropped a bit in the water. I decided to go ahead anyway to see what would happen. I let the flour and water plus leaven autolyse for approximately 4 hours, did a slightly longer bulk fermentation with 4 sets of folds every 30 minutes and 2 sets of folds every hour.