Blog posts

The highly anticipated Oysterfest took place today and is the biggest draw up to this neck of this "woods", as far as events go.  There's beer and numerous vendors of oyster's in many different styles.  I'm not an oyster guy but apparently some of the world's best oysters come from right here.  There's an oyster eating competitions and all of the restaurants that vend compete for "best oyster" each year.  Many thousands gather and it's quite the spectacle.  

You find these muffins in places with an Azorean Portuguese population, like SE Massachusetts, where I've eaten plenty of them. Crisp on the outside, soft on the inside. Sort of a cross between Portuguese Sweet Bread and English Muffins. But better. Great at breakfast or tea-time, with or without butter. These are tarted up a bit with a biga and some lemon peel.

Biga

Today's bake is a focaccia! I've made a more then a few over the years and tried many recipes, and this is the one that finally pleased me.

It's based on this old post & recipe, with only minor adjustments.

Very excited to be part of the community.

Even more excited to bake my first successful pure sourdough bread using the 1, 2, 3 formula with some changes.

I'll post more pictures later.

100g of sourdough starter (100% hydration)

177.5g of water

300g flour

6g salt

 These are by far the best hot dog rolls I have made yet.  I wanted to make a nice soft and fluffy hot dog bun without resorting to intensive kneading so I used my last version of these buns and added cream cheese to soften it up.  I also increased the % of Semolina and reduced the Caputo 00 flour.

To compensate for the 55% water content in the cream cheese I decreased the water in the overall dough but the water content for the cream cheese is not taken into consideration for the overall hydration of the dough.

Yes, they really did find einkorn in the tombs of the Pharaohs…..but it was the Italians really messed up farro for the English speaking.   Farro, for Italians, comes is 3 sizes that are based on the size of the grain kernel.  Small is einkorn, medium (the most common farro) is emmer and the large size spelt.

Bagels are one of my most favorite things to eat.  They are so versatile, so forgiving; they go with anything — from smoked white fish to jam — and never complain.  You can eat them by themselves just fine or slather with butter or cream cheese, and you’ve got yourself a meal.

I find that spring cold fronts are very inspirational for my baking projects. One just blew in to the Front Range causing a rare full rainy day and another day of almost cold weather. So, since I was stuck at home waiting for various repair people, I thought of my long ago vow to try to make whole wheat croissants.

I decided to use the formula from “Advanced Bread and Pastry” (AB&P) for hand mixed croissants with poolish with the following modifications:

1. All of the final dough flour would be freshly ground white wheat flour,

I bought a large bucket of  Organic Hard Red Winter Wheat Berries from Honeyville, through Costco when they were on sale the other day. Since shipping was included, as well as the bucket and gamma seal lid, it came out to be a good buy.

I did not quite realize how large a bucket this was going to be, though I had a good idea that 40 pounds was going to give me a LOT of berries.