Benito's blog

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.

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.

Here is the video I made recently to show the steps involved in making my 100% whole wheat sourdough Hokkaido milk bread.

Please enjoy.

You might enjoy reading the article I wrote for Breadtopia Whole Wheat Sourdough Hokkaido Milk Bread

Benny

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

I’m continuing to explore the uses for the stiff sweet levain and today’s bake is my first use of it in a baguette. So I made adjustments to the Yorkville Sourdough Baguette recipe (the original recipe is posted here Poppyseed Crusted Yorkville Sourdough Baguettes – Breadtopia)

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.

Using my home fermented miso I decided to try using it with a 100% whole wheat sourdough bread which I hadn’t tried before.  

If you’re interested in making homemade miso here is the post where I started a new batch most recently with a link to the detailed post outlining how to make it from scratch.

I’ve never made hot cross buns before and have only had supermarket ones that I never liked. Having a new appreciation for candied peel I decided that I would try my hand at developing a formula for a sourdough 100% whole wheat version.

Tomorrow is Pie Day 3.14, what do you have prepared to celebrate? Instead of a double crusted pie I decided to bake a tart today (Pie day minus 1 = 3.13 ). The lemons looked really good yesterday at the market so decided upon a lemon tart which uses a pate sucrée pasty.

I like an extra lemony and tart curd so my curd has a bit more lemon zest and a bit less sugar than I usually see in the lemon fillings in recipes.

For the pastry - pate sucrée