Benito's blog

I haven’t made a pizza in ages and had a hankering for sourdough pizza.  I’m made minor changes to how I ferment my sourdough pizza dough, I’ve realized that my pizza dough in the past had been underfermented.

I’ve had my eye on this method of shaping a milk bread for sometime when I first saw this on my IG feed.  This bake is inspired by Chiew See of Autumn Kitchen, she used a similar method of shaping a matcha milk bread last summer and I’ve wanted to try it ever since and finally got around to doing it this long weekend. 

I won’t bother posting the formula as it is the same as previously posted.  For this loaf I added toasted black sesame, pumpkin and sunflower seeds during lamination.  Bulk went to  60% rise in the aliquot jar and then final bench warm proof to 110% at which time it went into the fridge for a cold retard.  Based on the slight spreading that this loaf had either it is a bit overproofed or over hydrated.

Miso nori sourdough 77% hydration 20% whole red fife.  For this bake I really pushed fermentation using the aliquot jar I shaped at a 60% rise then ended final proof at 110%. A quick 20 minutes in the freezer while the oven preheated and baked. One mistake I made was that I forgot to turn the oven down to 450ºF after I loaded the dough. I didn’t catch my mistake until 12 mins into baking. Now the miso already makes the crust darker but some amount of the colour is also that high bake temperature.

Recently I changed from Robin Hood Bread flour to Anita’s Organic All Purpose flour.  I did a flour stress test and found that Anita’s is more extensible than Robin Hood, however, I’ve discovered in my past couple of bakes that it cannot absorb as much water.  In this bake I’ve reduced the hydration of this formula from 80 to 76%.  I did a bake of this formula that came out flat.  At first I thought it was over proofed, since I’ve been pushing proofing, but when I sliced it open it showed no signs of overproofing so my feeling is that it was over hydrated.

This is the first time I’ve eaten an Ichigo Daifuku so I can say it the best I’ve ever eaten ?. This is the second time making mochi and I don’t think I’ve shared the method I found on the net that makes this so easy to prepare.  Normally, the traditional Japanese method is to prepare glutinous rice and then pound it for hours and hours.  OK I do NOT have time for that so there is a shortcut.  Does the shortcut make exactly the same chewy texture we so love about mochi, not quite, but it is good enough for most of us except diehard mochi perfectionists (not me).

This recipe is an adaptation of Maurizio’s cardamon sweet roll recipe.  The dough is enriched and uses a Yudane to gelatinize some of the starches to make for a more shreddable soft crumb.  After the delicious cake I made last week using yuzu lemon I was trying to think of other ways of using lemon and yuzu and thought about sweet rolls.  So these are filled with lemon sugar and iced with a yuzu vanilla cream cheese icing.  Let’s hope this works and tastes good. 

8”x8” square pan, lined with parchment.