Blog posts

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.

Last week it was time to bake again time to use the culture that i look after at work, to be in readiness for an evening class "Introduction to Sour Dough"

The dough itself was the simple 3:2:1 Flour : Water :Culture the only difference was to step up the water by a further 100ml the salt was 2% other additions were Butter 2%,Turmeric powder @ 0.25% i decided on the Turmeric to possibly contrast the Feta cheese @ 4%  and black olives @ 2% 

Certainly getting Figgy with it!

Using up my Figs from Te Mata Figs that I purchased at the Auckland food show yesterday.

Very Figgilicious!!

No yucky preservatives or additives...Just beautiful figs!!

Heaven, Heaven, I am in heaven:)

Made up a batch of Naan bread tonight for my year's first Tandoori Chicken.  I have a recipe for Tandoori Chicken that was given to me from an Indian ex-neighbour years ago and I will never stray from it.  Too good.  First time making Naan this way.  Made it on grill with quarry tiles, preheated to a high heat.  My trick is to pour bit of oil in the drip tray.  The high heat causes flare up, and the flames cause the internal grill heat to go off the temperature gauge charts.  I am sure this is not technically safe, so please do not try it...I am confident