Benito's blog

This bake used my offshoot of Alan’s starter, a 80% hydration and all whole rye.  The levain was whole wheat and was stiff and sweet.  What is a bit different about this bake was that I used rye for the first time in a tangzhong, this one again has a 1:2 ratio of rye:milk.  I had a bag of sweet potatoes so decided to add mashed sweet potato to this dough.  Being still in Fort Lauderdale I do not have my Ankarsrum Assistent so fully hand mixed this dough.  

Alan’s starter is quite potent and still not getting much of a sour scent to it.  It is living in a ziplock bag in my fridge and I made the stiff sweet levain from it directly without any refreshing and the levain was ready in no time.  I think I’ll figure out how to bring some home and compare it to mine.  Alan if you read this, what is the hydration that you keep your starter?  It is certainly not 100%.

We’re back down in Fort Lauderdale for 2.5 months and Alan was kind enough to share some of his starter with me, thank you Alan.  He also gave me some SAF gold and red IDY along with some whole rye.  Immediately I note how different his starter smells than mine.  Mine is fed 100% whole rye and has a much more sour smell.  This starter is fed KA AP I believe and is much less sour and a bit sweet smelling.

We are soon departing for warmer climes so our lovely neighbour will be taking care of our mail for us.  So to thank them in advance I like to bake them a loaf of bread.  I decided to bake them a simple Hokkaido milk bread with some whole wheat and extra flavour from toasted sesame seeds.

For appetizers before dinner tonight I wanted to have some bbq pork gua bao and pork shrimp and chive dumplings.  This was a second try at sourdough gua bao and finally successful.  I’m not sure why the previous attempt at this didn’t work without the hit of IDY because this time the only real change was the addition of sweet potato.  The gua bao will get filled with bbq pork after re-steaming just prior to serving so the filling isn’t in these photos.

So this is the big weekend where I have to have the three layer tropical carrot cake ready.  I baked the cake on Thursday, once cooled fully wrapped in plastic wrap and refrigerated until this morning.  Today I made the frosting and iced and decorated the cake.  The orange stuff on top is candied orange zest.  My cake carrier unfortunately is a bit to short for this decorated cake so some of the frosting at the center got smooshed.  I would increase the frosting by 50% so I’d have more than enough next time.

I like to tinker with my formulas over time.  I haven’t done a country sourdough in a while and wanted to try it using a stiff levain.  I kept the hydration to a comfortable 76% since I haven’t done this style of a bread in quite a while so didn’t want to go crazy high.  

I am still working on my steamed buns.  Today I prepped to try again with a new sourdough gua bao recipe.  I’ve added a tangzhong to make the flavour more complex and increase the hydration without making the dough handle like a higher hydration.  There is also some vegetable oil to help with moisture and tenderness.  I have kept the baking powder in the recipe since almost all the recipes I’ve seen have either baking powder or baking soda to help reduce any sourness, I’m not sure that it is necessary or not.

I was working on a SD version this morning but something went wrong, I suspect I measured the water incorrectly and added way too much.  When I realized my error I started a second batch, but since I had no levain ready it was IDY to the rescue.  I’m glad I made the second batch, other than an issue of tearing of the dough during one coil fold where I wasn’t gentle enough it turned out just fine even with the increased hydration to 110%.  Another change was that I did final proof with a couche.

I felt like having fish burgers so decided to make buns for the fish.  I’ve had some luck with using potato so decided to add some mashed potato to my milk bread for buns.  Both the potato along with the tangzhong should made very soft buns.