Benito's blog

I ran out of bread, hard to believe since I’m semi retired with more time to bake, but it happened.  I found a bit of whole kamut in the back of the closet so that gave me the idea of combining it with some semola rimacinata (semolina) since they are related and both have a great yellow colour.  I decided to try doing a cold retard after shaping.  I’ve never done this with a milk bread that I can recall.  This is the reason for the blisters on the crust, which for this type of bread I’m not a huge fan of.

This year we will be away until just before Christmas.  As a result, I need to do at least some of my Christmas baking before we go.  I’ve been eyeing the mazanec recipe from Maurizio Leo since Easter.  I realize that Mazanec is an Easter bread, but the recipes for Mazanec and Vanocka are so similar and since Vanocka is a christmas bread I thought I would try making these.  The Mazanec seems to be shaped as a boule and given a cross scoring.

This is my first bake using my new Ankarsrum Assistent to develop the dough.  What they say is true, there is definitely a learning curve and I am at the beginning of that slope.  This would usually take 30 mins from start of mix to the end of kneading in the KA mixer, not that I could safely do two loaves though.  With my being totally new to this mixer and wanting to try both the dough hook and the roller, it took me 60 mins!  Much of it was me f’ing around though so I can’t blame the Ankarsrum Assistent.

I just unboxed, cleaned and setup my new Ankarsrum Assistent, I’m loving the build quality and this gorgeous orange we picked.  I can’t wait to try it out.  I plan to bake two Hokkaido milk breads tomorrow.  Hopefully I’ll have a glowing review and I hope I can learn to use this quickly with tomorrow’s bake.  In the meantime here are the photos.

I’ve had this loaf on my list to bake for sometime.  I’m still not sure that I love high percentage rye breads, this one is 59%, but wanted to try a different recipe to find out.

Having friends over gives me an excuse to bake dessert.  Bags of lemons were on sale so I decided to bake a lemon tart.  I hadn’t tried lemon curd with chocolate before so decided to bake my chocolate pate sucrée for this tart.  Since the curd recipe leaves me with 4 egg whites I decided to make Bravetart’s marshmallow meringue to top the tart and then torch the meringue for a nice finish.

So I’ve discovered that most people prefer white bread to wholegrain, at least it seems that my friends do.  So in planning for a dinner party I decided I’d do my milk bun recipe but using only bread flour and no wholegrain other than the rye in the starter.  They turned out really really well especially when finished with some melted butter and some Maldon flaked salt.

I find that if I don’t make baguettes often enough I get very rusty. I haven’t made baguettes in about 4 months so was really very overdue. I’ve always thought that epis look really nice and never tried making one, so here is my first effort at an epi. I also hadn’t done a seeded crust in quite some time so that was also overdue.

I have always loved eating these delicious crispy flaky pancakes from my homeland and always wanted to try making them.  They are definitely best eaten right off the frying pan so they can’t be better than homemade.

I’ve just uploaded a new video to my YouTube channel about dough development.  Novice bakers might find it useful.  In the video I demonstrate some of the techniques I use to develop dough strength.  Hopefully someone finds it useful to them.

My index of bakes.