Benito's blog

We are having Christmas dinner with my side of the family this evening and I offered to bring bread, of course.  My partner and I often make a meal out of roasted vegetables and butternut squash is in the rotation.  Some of these squashes are huge and more than we can eat at a sitting so we have leftovers.  Incorporating some of this into a bread seemed a good way of using up some leftover squash so I decided to make these rolls.

8 buns in 9” round pan

Ingredients

Sweet Stiff Starter 

I haven’t had tons of success with spelt in any great quantity, but didn’t want to give up on this ancient grain.  It seems to taste good when paired with Kamut aka khorasan also an ancient grain.  Gluten is made up of gliadin and glutenin.  Gliadin is the substance that gives the stretchy feel to dough, and glutenin provides the elasticity and the structure to ensure that it holds its shape.  While wheat has a balance of gliadin to glutenin , spelt has a higher ratio of gliadin to glutenin.

This one is a present, so no crumb shots unless the recipient sends me a photo.  Same procedure as my previous bake of this recipe with the only deviation being sprinkling sesame seeds on top of the dough after the second application of the egg wash.

For the detailed recipe click this link.

"These traditional French butter cookies are a snap to make. They positively melt in your mouth and make a great addition to any holiday cookie lineup. The cardamom-and-orange combination is perfect for the holidays, but if you aren’t a fan, you could simply omit those flavourings and add a bit more vanilla."—Giselle Courteau, co-owner, Edmonton

This is my second bake using the method I described in my last bake of 100% whole wheat.  In short, I sift out the larger flakes of bran with a #40 sieve, that bran gets scalded and allowed to cool in the fridge overnight while the levain ferments.  In the morning the dough is mixed and the gluten is developed before adding the bran.  The major difference with this bake is that I increased the hydration to 90%.  Despite that I believe that this flour could still take even more which I’ll do next time.

For this loaf I wanted to try sifting out the larger bran flakes.  I finally purchased a #40 sieve.  Taking all the flour, I sifted it through the #40 sieve extracting about 46.5 g of large course bran flakes from 492 g of the stoneground organic whole wheat flour.  I intended on scalding the bran, but made an error adding an equal part by weight of room temperature water then remembering that I wanted to scald so added the second equal part by weight boiled water.  The bran was mixed to ensure it was fully hydrated and then cooled overnight in the fr

I wanted to try this recipe again but with more of the porridge and cooked a bit longer. I increased the porridge to 15% and cooked it with half milk and water. However, in order to keep the porridge moist during cooking, an unspecified about of water was added. The porridge is kept at room temperature covered until the next day.