Benito's blog

This is the first time I’ve baked bread down here in Fort Lauderdale Florida while on vacation.  I wasn’t planning on baking so didn’t bring any starter with me.  I met with Alfanso while down here and he was kind enough to have given me some osmotolerant yeast from his stash that he got from Amazon.  So while having bread baking withdrawal I decided that I’d bake some bread.  We are having a small group of good friends over for dinner tonight and took the chance to bake buns to go with dinner.  Who doesn’t like freshly baked buns with their dinner?

I'm going to be on vacation and away from my starter for almost a month.  So no baking while on vacation.  So this is what I am doing to ensure my starter, John Dough is healthy and ready to go when I return.

I’ve been gradually making adjustments to my formula and in this case I’ve increased the hydration via increasing the proportion of flour in the tangzhong from 5% to 7.5% keeping the ratio of flour to milk in this tangzhong to 1:5. The resulting dough is a bit stickier to work with, however, I’m hoping that the crumb will be even more soft and tender yet still shreddable.  You probably have noticed that I love black sesame seeds so that was always going to be a good inclusion for this bread.

Still working my way through my 2 kg bag of stoneground organic spelt and hoping that I’ll figure this ancient grain out eventually.  I wanted to try again at using only spelt for a Hokkaido milk bread.  My first attempt was tasty but a bit squat for my liking.  Thinking that the gluten net just wasn’t strong enough to retain the pressure of the expanding gases during baking I though that I could improve the bake by increasing the VWG in this recipe.  I also increased the tangzhong to 5% and increased the milk.  

I’ve not made a porridge yet to add to any 100% whole grain bread so thought it was high time to try.  I have a bag of the new Harvest Flakes from Anita’s Organic Mill that they sent me to try out.

No these aren’t 100% whole spelt baguettes. Although I’ve been on a 100% whole grain baking spree I still prefer my baguettes mostly white flour but wanted to try some spelt in a baguette since I realized that I haven’t yet. So this formula is similar to the kamut baguettes I’ve posted before with spelt instead. As well, I changed the levain to a stiff 60% hydration levain.

Sorry about yet another Hokkaido milk bread, I’m still trying to improve this recipe. To do so I have increased both the tangzhong and the hydration of the dough to increase the moisture in the crumb. I’ve finally created a spreadsheet to make documenting these changes easier.

I'm still working on learning to bake with 100% whole spelt since I received a lovely Christmas present of a 2 kg bag of Anita's Organic Whole Spelt from the mill!  So to also learn about about the use of a stiff sweet levain I thought I'd use one in this non enriched dough for the first time.  As you may know having a significant amount of sugar in the starter creates osmotic pressure causing the microbes to dehydrate.  This has a greater negative effect on the LAB than it does on the yeast.

I've been meaning to make these sablés for some time.  I've adapted a recipe I found in Jennifer Lapidus' book Southern Ground.

YIELD: ABOUT 40 COOKIES

240g (2⅔ cups) whole-rye flour

270g (2¼ cups) whole einkorn flour

390g (1¾ cups) unsalted butter, at room temperature

180g (1 cup) granulated sugar, plus more for sprinkling, I would use turbinado sugar for coating in the future rather than granulated

½ teaspoon fine sea salt

100g (4 ounces) bittersweet chocolate, chopped

For 20 cookies

It is time for another two pizza nights as it had been some time since our last pizzas.  If you haven’t tried tuna on pizza you owe it to yourself to try it.  Make sure you buy good Italian tuna in olive oil, not the North American canned tuna because the Italian tuna is so much better.  Since trying it several years ago I just can’t eat other canned tuna anymore, they are just lacking something in both texture and flavour.

For 4 9” pizzas NY style thin crust 200 g each 

Levain Build 100% hydration 35 g needed