Benito's blog

I hadn’t made a pizza in half year so it was high time that we had pizza.  I decided to try baking another Capricciosa pizza (capocollo, mushrooms, olives artichokes and tomato sauce) and ensured that the mushrooms were pre-cooked so that they didn’t flood the pizza with their liquid during baking.  To that end I dry sautéed the mushrooms after slicing them in sixths until they were nicely browned.  The artichokes I allowed to drain in a sieve so that they didn’t too much liquid to the pizza.

We are going to a BBQ at a friend’s home and I wanted to bring something for dessert.  I’ve only made these types of sweet rolls a couple of times so thought I would make sweet rolls.  I’ve been baking with whole grains more and more so decided I’d make these at 50% stoneground organic whole wheat.  With even 50% whole wheat these should still be fluffy, shreddable and soft.  We love cardamom but I wanted to add another flavour, I’ve recently been using orange zest a lot and thought orange and cardamom should go well together.

I’m joining my partner in Newfoundland to visit his family there. Working from home I was able to squeeze in a bake so I could bring some bread with me. Since my dinner guests all seem to have enjoyed my brioche, I decided to bake a 50% WW SD Brioche, but this time with the addition of dark chocolate chips to make it a bit more decadent.

Another variation on my 100% WW SD Hokkaido milk bread, this time with orange zest and poppyseeds. The weather is much more humid this time of year and as a result my flour isn’t able to absorb quite as much water as during the winter. I forgot to take this into account so the dough was stickier and more challenging to shape. Ultimately it baked up just fine, giving it a good couple of hours in the fridge would have helped a bit but I didn’t do that since I was out of bread so that is an emergency around here!

We’re finally getting to visit our closest friends who we haven’t seen since last summer.  So we’re bringing pie and bread, of course!  I decided on trying my recipe for 50% WW 25% butter SD brioche again because it is a little bit sinful with the butter and yet has a good amount of whole wheat.  My friends prefer a soft bread so this should be perfect. 

Third in my series of polenta breads each different from the previous.  This third loaf instead of either cooked polenta or saccharified polenta, I used cooled cooked polenta and then held it at 135-140°F after being mixed with koji rice for 14 hours.  I’ve made regular amazake before but this was my first time trying it with something other than cooked rice.  So to understand what amazake is you need to know what koji rice is.  Koji rice is rice that has been inoculated with aspergillus oryzae.  This incredible mold has so many food related uses.

This is a bread recipe from a local baker here in Toronto who teaches baking Centennial College, Matthew James Duffy.  I made minor changes to it and put it into the spreadsheet.  This is my first run at this, and probably won’t be the last if it tastes as good as it smell. Based on the cracks on the sides of the loaf I suspect this is under fermented a bit.  We’ll see tomorrow when I slice it, given the amount of rye I suspect it will benefit for at least an overnight rest.

Anis Bouabsa baguettes have been very popular on TFL over the years and I realized that I’ve only baked them three times so far.  Only once plain, another time with a sesame seed coat and then a third time with chocolate (this was so good).  Since there’s been chatter about Bouabsa baguettes recently I thought I’d try a fourth bake.  I so seldom bake with IDY I was very anxious about over proofing.  I don’t think they are over proofed but I do think my scores were a touch shallow.

I’ve done swirled, flavored milk breads before but they were based on another baker’s formula. This is my first time doing a swirled milk bread based on my 25% whole wheat Hokkaido milk bread recipe. If you look closely at the formula I’ve greatly increased the percent pre-fermented flour. The reason for this is that this dough is even more enriched than usual. Both the matcha paste and cocoa have extra sugar added to them. Without the extra fermentation from the larger amount of levain, there is a great risk that the dough would ferment extremely slowly.