Benito's blog

Lap Cheong Filled 50% WW SD Milk Buns

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For those unfamiliar Lap Cheong are the Chinese sausages that are dry cured and super flavourful. I haven’t had these in decades and saw them at the local Chinese market so had to pick up a package. I decided to use them in a filled bun to showcase the flexibility of the SD Hokkaido Milk bread dough. For these buns I decided on a whim to use 50% WW and 50% bread flour. The in addition to the Lap Cheong the filling has oyster sauce and scallions.

Cranberry Orange Cream Cheese Layered Pie

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I love pie, it is my favourite dessert.  The pie I made last week was great and the pastry was the best most tender all butter pastry for pie crust that I’ve ever used.  If you’re interested in that recipe I shared it here.  This recipe I’m making this week is from The Book on Pie by Erin McDowell.  If you haven’t seen her book yet, it is very good with lots of unique pie ideas.

Black Sesame 100% Whole Wheat Sourdough

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I had some black sesame seeds that I had ground with some sugar 6:1 ratio a while back for a flavoured milk bread I had made. I felt like having a black sesame flavoured bread so decided to add the ground sesame seeds to my 100% whole wheat sourdough bread. The colour of the dough was fabulous a wonderful grey brown with some black spots from slightly larger bits of black sesame seeds. I unfortunately made a boo boo during the baked and baked at 500°F for 25 mins with steam forgetting to drop the oven temperature.

50:50 Middle Class Whole Wheat Sourdough Brioche Bubble Buns

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I have never made brioche before but was so inspired by Melissa’s brioche bubble buns that she shared with us Sourdough bubble top brioche. a while back so I decided since I am on a whole grain kick that I’d try to develop a recipe for sourdough brioche composed of 50% whole wheat. I loved her shaping of these buns so used her method shaping three small boules and baking them in a muffin pan. I used my now standard stiff sweet levain in order to avoid sour tang in the brioche.

Baguette Shaping and Scoring Video

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This is the video I just created to show how I’m currently shaping and scoring my baguettes.  There are so many different ways to do this and I don’t pretend to be a master of any of them.  I am using the technique that Scott Megee shows in his video and this is only my second time using it.  I am quite pleased with the quality of the baguettes I made using this shaping method. 

Hope you enjoy the video.

Benny

Homemade Miso

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I love miso if you haven’t noticed from some of my posts including my most recent Miso 100% WW Sourdough.  Not running out of miso requires advanced planning for a couple of reasons.  First it takes about a year to ferment the rich red miso that I love and having the koji rice on hand to make the miso.  We have a sake maker here in Toronto in the Distillery District which is a good walk from where I live and that is where I have purchased the frozen koji rice.