Blog posts

The photo is the fifth try at a bread loosely related to Forkish's Field Blend.

The smell was sweet and rich; crust crunchy; crumb was soft but chewy and very flavorful. I think it is the best levain bread I have made. Dough is 75% hydration, starter 100% Hydration and starter flour is 20% of total flour. The timing of steps is particularly useful for working hours if the second day is off or you like to get up early. 

Hello Everyone,

A new post after a long time.

Today's post is about Pull Apart Buns made with yeast, haven't yet started on the sourdough journey :-(  Actually there's some yeast left in my freezer and I want to use it up before I get into sourdoughs. For the initial rise, I refrigerated the dough overnight and the next day, shaped and gave a second rise at room temperature.

First sours of the school year. Each student makes their own levain over the last 5 weeks.

We made a 40% and 70%

Also made sub buns as well

Carlton Brooks CCE, CEPC, ACE

The pull apart bread loaf can be made with many things, it all starts with a buttered 10 X 16 piece of dough.

HERBS

Use your favorites! I generally use parsley, with a little cilantro, oregano and chives. If I'm serving it with chicken, it's parsley, chervil and rosemary. For an Italian meal, it's garlic, onions, basil.

Or you can go sweet, sugar and cinnamon. Or maple sugar, chopped apples, and cinnamon. You can get creative.

I grew up in a household where bread and butter was served with every meal. Now granted, it rarely was a nice, warm home baked bread. More likely than not it was either Rainbo or Wonder brand sliced white bread from the corner store. Today I still like bread with almost every meal, but I've made great strides in seeing to it that it's a home baked bread.

I've been experimenting with 80% dough lately. I use a no knead process, initially turning the mix every half hour 3 or 4 times. I do an 18 hour cold ferment either as a batch ferment or in a basket after shaping with the stretch and fold method. Though the crumb is nice and open, I haven't been able to get the dough elastic enough to get the  37 oz. loaves  to 'stand up' to my satisfaction.

And my Pastry class continues. Last weekend ,we’ve started the cookies/cakes class with a theory lesson for half the day on cakes, batters, and creaming/foaming techniques and trouble shooting cakes. This particular lesson will be split into 4 classes. Here is a picture of the cookies made by all of the class (Mine and my team mate's are the ones on the cooling rack; they were uneven and somewhat ragged).

Sourdough in action again. 

Even since I received a starter from carl im obsess with it, now I bake everything with sourdough. Its awesome with great taste. I used the recipe from www.norishingjoy.com but I have made a little twist.

1/2 cup sourdough wholewheat starter
3/4 cup Canola Oil
3/4 cup whole wheat flour

3/4 cup AP flour
3/4 cup granuate sugar
1 teaspoons vanilla

1 teaspoon of minced orange zest

Juergan was my inspiration when he mentioned I should try spelt in the starter on the 40/60 loaf. I thought about it and made a biga with 2 feedings using 50g spelt/50 g apple yeast water for a total of 200g, no  commercial yeast .I let it rise all night in the oven with the light on. Wow...it really grew and smelled lovely..faint apples   I subtracted that from the total liquid/flour in the  Norwich formula that I use as a base. I also subbed spelt for 1/2 the rye called for.

This is another post of Pizza night with a new formula. This time with a starter and Commercial Yeast Poolish.

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