Blog posts

I've used Reinhart's Portuguese Sweet Bread recipe to make Hawaiian Rolls for a friend on a couple of occasions.  I modify the recipe in his Bread Baker's Apprentice book to use a poolish at 100% hydration and to include more flour as I find this recipe very sticky for some reason.  The original recipe's overall hydration is not that high, but maybe I screwed up the measurements somewhat.  Next time I may try Floyd's Hawaiian Rolls recipe which is similar but includes pineapple juice.

I had enough orders this week so I have some crumb shots and some not as most was going toward orders. I made my usual 100 % sourdough bagels from Wild Yeast blog but I used whey from my kefir for all of the liquid including feeding the staters..I use 1/2 rye starter and 1/2 white staters for the formula. They were all spoken for but the fragrance and shape are lovely so I have high hopes for the reviews on texture and flavor . I also had more orders for the Oatmeal Bread.

Yesterday, I baked the “Field Blend #2” bread from Ken Forkish's Flour Water Salt Yeast. It is a mixed grain and mixed leavening formula with 30% whole grains (wheat and rye). It is similar in method but quite different in flavor from the “Overnight Country Blonde,” which was the first bread I made from this book.

I got the book "How to Bake" by Paul Hollywood for my birthday recently, have been baking some bread from it; I like the sort of breads that are in it, though I don't like the "vagueness" in the recipes. Especially in the sourdough ones. For instance, the amount of hydration of the starter is not even mentioned. With my 100% hydration starter, the recipe below has a total hydration of 71,4%. Which I do not find that very high, considering the original recipe uses part whole wheat flour. And that is with the maximum amount of suggested water

Summer 2013 at Bread and Roses

It’s been busy here in Powburn, but there has been time for holidays too.   Bakery projects remain live, with much continued interest in the portfolio of artisan breads.   It is just a matter of continuing to believe, and to drive it all forward as best as I can possibly manage.

hello..firstly i like to apologized for my absence, i have been busy. but still managed to keep up my sourdough baking just had no time to post it. let me share a new adventure i did recently. baking with the infamous king of fruits "durian". i grew up eating lots of this, thanks to my dad. he used to buy in huge baskets. i even learnt to open the fruit.

Hello everyone,

So whilst i was waiting for the 50% Wholemeal feta and olive to bake i thought i could easily make another dough so i decided to try something different i would make this dough and do a bulk ferment with no stretch and folds  and see what we ended up with.

. . . just rolled in to flavour town!  This is one of the nicest tasting loaves I have ever produced.  I am totally hooked on sourdough now, am using dabrownmans excellent SD methods of work and am achieving the best tasting bread I have ever baked!  THANKS dabrownman, you are DMAN!

My next project is to re-bake all of my favourite recipes dman style in sourdough!

60 grams 100% levain

195 g bread flour

30 g whole wheat

45 g organic rye

210 g water

Got some fresh blueberries this past week and decided to make fruit tarts. Finally got back to the Bouchon book. Made the pate sucree and pastry creme. The pate sucree came out great. Was easy to make and handle during the roll-out. The pastry creme was flawed. The book says to use 83g of custard powder for the small batch, DONT! I did some research and feel they transposed the numbers wrong. Use 38g for a small batch and 46g for a large batch. I have not tried the chocolate pastry creme yet. Not sure if the numbers are right.