Benito's blog

I actually baked this twice now because I thought I had severely overproofed my first loaf.  After shortening the bench final proof before cold retard on my second loaf to compensate the second loaf was more or less the same.  Unfortunately I believe that this flour is too soft for me to bake at 100% as a hearth loaf.  It is hard to believe the difference between this loaf and the one I very recently baked at 75% red fife.  If my belief that red fife is too lacking in gluten is incorrect please let me know, I’m interested in hearing your ideas.

I don’t remember the last time I made a cobbler, and I was looking at my final half bag of frozen rhubarb sitting in my freezer that a friend gave me last spring from his garden and thought time to make a cobbler.  Of course, also feeling lazy I decided to buy frozen strawberries instead of fresh.  Although that is the lazy route, the frozen ones are much better than the fresh I can get this time of year so this should be better than fresh.  I don’t recall where I found this recipe that I’ve had saved in my Notes app for some time so cannot give the author credit.

I had a theme going for this Valentine’s Day weekend of sour cherries.  Of course I needed a dessert so what better than sour cherry raspberry pie.  I decided after reading through a pie cookbook that I would try to bake it differently.  I blind baked the crust and then baked cut outs that I then painted some with red gel food colour.  I also cooked the filling on the stovetop and then assembled the whole thing placing the red cut outs in a heart pattern for Valentine’s Day.