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 love baking challah breads so whenever we host a brunch recently it has given me an excuse to bake another challah in order to make a strata. Strata for those unfamiliar with it is essentially a way of making French toast for the masses and somewhat like a bread pudding. It is best that the challah is a couple of days old and a bit firm. In fact, to have a firmer challah I particularly like using 50% WW for the challah used to make a strata.
I have a big birthday for my partner to plan. So part of that is to bake one of his favourite cakes, carrot cake. You will notice that baking cakes isn’t something I do very often, in fact I probably bake fewer than one per year. So I thought it would be prudent to do a test bake and ensure that the recipe I’m doing tastes good and that I can turn out a decent cake. I hope to make this a three layer cake and decorate it better, although my decorating skills aren’t that great.
My family has a lot of birthdays from December to January. My mother’s is one of them so we are having her over for brunch this weekend. My favourite thing to make for brunch is a strata, I’ve made a few now and they are always tasty. One thing I should do but haven’t is bake the challah a couple of days ahead so it can stale a bit. So I decided I’d bake a slight variation of challah by adding the zest of half an orange to my sourdough challah 50% whole wheat.
Ilya recently started a thread linking to Martin Philip’s recipe on the King Arthur website for a IDY Pan de Cristal. I’ve always wanted to try baking this unique bread and I’m glad that I have now. I believe most recipes for this bread have some olive oil in them, so I added that. Also rather than mixing all the water at once, I bassinaged the water gradually. I used my Ankarsrum Assistent to mix since I am still learning to use it and want to get as much experience as possible. It does an awesome job with bassinage.
I baked this for the staff in our building as a Happy New Year present to them for all they do for us. Using once again my 50% WW SD Hokkaido Milk Bread dough as the base, I infused it with cardamom, cloves and orange zest. The filling has cardamom, cloves, cocoa powder, sugar, flour and chunks of dark chocolate. I have found that when the shaped dough is filled with spices and sugar that the hygroscopic effects of the sugar causes the layers to separate when baked. I now add flour in a 1:4 ratio to the sugar to counter this and so far it has worked well.
My first time trying this bake which Lance, Jeff, Martadella and Rob have been posting about. Not being sure if I would like it or not since I haven’t like many of the previous 100% ryes breads I’ve baked, I decided to make a half sized loaf. I also bought a fresh bag of Anita’s organic whole rye flour to ensure that the rye I used wasn’t starting to go off and alter the flavour. The cracking appears to show a bit of under proofing, I did 50 mins of final proof but the dough was showing a good number of broken bubbles but not cracks at that point so I decided to bake it.
