Benito's blog

My first two bakes of pretzels were yummy, however, the dough was hard to deal with.  In doing some research it seems that the hydration of that original recipe was too high.  So I’ve adjusted the hydration down to 65% which I believe is the upper end of the scale for soft pretzels. The dough was much easier to deal with especially transferring them into the simmering baking soda bath and out again.  I’m quite happy with these and they are now already all gone.

For my final bake of 2025 I decided to try something I’ve wanted to for some time.  I love chestnuts, when we were kids, my parents would buy them and we’d roast them.  We had to shell them which wasn’t fun but really isn’t that difficult, but it was so worth it since chestnuts are just yummy.  So for this Hokkaido Milk Bread I’ve added chestnuts two ways.  Some are added as inclusions, chopped.  The majority of them were cooked in milk and then blended.  I used this “chestnut milk” as the hydration for the tangzhong.

I baked these today have on Christmas morning and to bring to friends on Boxing Day who have kindly invited for a Boxing Day dinner.  I made a couple of mistakes, I forgot to include the orange zest the dough and then forgot to include the pecans in the filling.  So I added the missing zest from the dough in the filling and used a lot of the pecans on top.  I made cardamom rolls in the past and didn’t think there was a good balance between the cardamom and cinnamon.  I used equal parts cardamom and cinnamon and I think it is better this time.

Baked two of these, one as a gift and the other for turkey sandwiches post Christmas Dinner we are having tonight.  I have used most of my stash of frozen mashed purple sweet potatoes now.  I’ll have to pick up more in the spring.  We’ll be traveling for 45 days this winter so no need to get them yet.

This is the season to bake for friends and people who make your life better.  This recipe was for a Bundt.  Bundts are rather awkward to walk with especially during the winter.  So instead I baked this in two pullman pans.  I didn’t get a chance to try any, but I plan on baking this again in the coming week for a dinner party.  Reports from people who did eat it said they loved it.  Then again, since they didn’t have to bake it, what else would they say?  LOL.

Finally back from a lovely vacation.  I did a Locum for the past week and finally had a chance to bake.  I haven’t baked a chocolate bread in ages, I love chocolate and tart cherries, so this chocolate sourdough focaccia with tart cherries and sugared rosemary was born.  This is a variant of my recent focaccia, however, it has unsweetened cocoa powder, semi sweetened dark chocolate chunks, dried tart cherries and a small amount of sugar in the dough.  Surprisingly the sugared rosemary is actually quite yummy and goes well with this focaccia.

I saw a recipe for a rose pizza sauce and followed that as an idea for this pizza with some changes.  I prefer prosciutto to genoa salami and added sautéed spinach for some extra colour.  I’m quite pleased with how this turned out.  The whipped ricotta was lovely, if I were to make it again I’d add lemon zest to the whipped ricotta to make it a bit more complex.

Not too long ago I made Anko Mooncakes.  In making that, I made more Anko paste than I needed thinking that I’ll have a use for it eventually and it freezes well.  So as I do when I prepare a batch of mashed purple sweet potatoes, I froze 100 g portions of the anko paste in ziplock bags.  I always clean and reuse the ziplock bags as I don’t like single use plastic much.  

I’ve never made soft pretzels before or any bread where the dough is briefly cooked in a simmering alkaline water bath.  I saw this recipe for soft pretzels in Bake from Scratch and I had time this morning to try it out.  Pretty fast since it uses commercial yeast. 

I can’t believe it has been more than a hear since I last baked baguettes and even longer since I’ve made this formula.  I am definitely out of practice, the shaping wasn’t perfect but each successive one was better shaped than the previous.  I will need to do another bake in the nearish future to try to get the muscle memory back.  In the meantime, I’m not mad at this bake.  I particularly like the blistered and thin crisp crust.  They went very well with the Chicken Marbella Plums two ways that I made as the main course.