Blog posts

Today's SD batard included about 2% toasted wheat germ as 'toadies.'  These add a really nice and subtle, nutty flavour enhancer and you can definitely taste the toadies in the finish. 

I baked this at 75% hydration, autolysing the flour and water over night, mixed and developed the dough as per my previous post.  I baked this in the new Lodge combo cooker for 8 minutes covered @ 500F and surprisingly 12 minutes 450F convection.  Next bake I will go 10 minutes covered and then judge.  A pretty satisfying small loaf.

We went with another multigrain white bread this week but instead of putting ground sesame and flax seeds in it we went with the 3 P’s: pistachios, prunes and pumpkin seeds.   This bread is the equivalent of 38% whole grains due to the Toadies and malts.

So I thought I would mix up a batch of Pita Bread for dinner. I put ground cardamon in the dough for a change of flavor.

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Hello,

It shouldn't matter much, but in case any of my old bread baker friends was wondering, a few months ago Floyd agreed to change my online name to Sam (my name), instead of 'gvz', which was a reference to the pink floyd track of the grand vizier's garden party in ummagumma.    Anyway, I wanted to be me instead of some alias.   So I am Sam.  Nice to meet you.   Maybe some day I will put my picture on here.

I purchased several sprouted products from here. I have made my granola recipe for almost 30 years. Reluctant to try anything new I broke out the bowls and pans and did it anyway !  What a treat. I will never use plain rolled oats again. This is the perfect texture crunchy and chewy both. A wonderful complex flavor and for some reason the coconut taste comes through more in every bite also. A win-win in my book .  

I finally got around to purchasing a container of food grade lye . I had tried to find info on lye baths for bagels but there is very little out there and the percent of lye to water that was used seemed way off. I am glad that I pursued this and have some data that I hope will help others. I purchased the lye on Amazon  here . Will likely last me a good long while. I used 5 grams in 1 gallon of filtered tap water. This is approx. 12-12.5 % alkalinity.

We have been trying out various versions of buns for hot dogs and hamburgers.   This time we went back to basics and looked for a whole wheat bun on the King Arthur website.  We found their 100% WW one for hot dogs and their white bread one for hamburgers.

Following up on Wingnut's pizza post, here are a few shots of our pesto pizza from last night.

I used an overnight poolish for the crust, made the dough in the early AM and baked in the evening.