Benito's blog

This is my third time baking semolina sourdough baguettes and I ran a bit short on the Semola rimacinata flour that I usually use for this. I also hadn’t baked a baguette in some time so I felt a bit rusty, but I think overall the bake went well.

These are likely a bit overproofed I’m guessing based on the so so ears. The kitchen was pretty warm and I didn’t account for how fast they would proof on the counter, that and my starter is now creating levains and dough that ferment more quickly. I will need to take this into account in the future.

This is my first bake of rye at this percentage, prior to this I have only used 5-10% in my sourdough breads.  I’ve followed Eric’s original recipe but followed Dan’s procedure building the gluten before adding the levain, salt and holdout water.

The crust is soft after it cools and will slice better the next day. If you need bread that will stand a few days, this mix is good for mailing across the country. Sealed in a plastic bag after cooling, this rye will be great 4-5 days later and freezes very well.

For one loaf

I’ve always loved the idea of babkas when I first saw them on the internet.  They look so shiny and sticky and yummy.  Now that I have sent John Dough to rehab and have him on an all rye diet I thought I would test him out and build a white levain to raise this my first babka.  My old starter could never raise a good white starter, I’d always have to add some whole grain of some sort to it for it to have an adequate rise.

I baked Maurizio’s formula for this bread which I share below copied from his website for those interested in trying this bake.  At the end I’ll post what I will do next time I bake this based on the final results.

This tangzhong pan bread is a direct bake, meaning it’s baked the same day you mix (except for the levain, which is created the night before).

I wasn’t planning on making such a large loaf, but it turned out to be just over 1 kg, I guess that doesn’t qualify it as being a miche, I’ll call it a mini miche ?. It was with this bake that I noticed how extremely sluggish my starter had become, it’s now in starter rehab on a diet of whole rye and bubbling along quite nicely.

Sesame crusted purple sweet potato sourdough sandwich loaf. Followed FullProofBaking formula as follows with some minor modifications.  

I’ve only slightly modified this recipe I saw Kristen post on Instagram.  I added a poppyseed crust to the bread because I thought that it would go quite well with the flavour of this bread and I was right.  My family did really like the bread and we had some good sandwiches on it.

This was only the 2nd sourdough sandwich loaf I’ve made. And perhaps only my 3rd sandwich loaf ever.  My first sourdough sandwich loaf was underproofed and was posted last year on my blog.  

Benny’s Ciabatta Bake No. 1

Prior to the many posting here about biga I had already decided I’d try a non biga ciabatta recipe.  One of the people I follow on YouTube, Joy Ride Coffee has a formula up that I decided to give a go.  I decided to make the ciabatta with a 12% white flour I have left over from an early baguette bake and only used whole grain in the levain.  The levain itself is my usual 100% hydration.

Flour and water mixed and autolyse x 1 hour.

Still wanting to see if our very strong 13.3% protein Canadian flours interfere with the open crumb I’m attempting another bake of this formula I’ve thrown together.  Instead of 80% strong bread flour, I use 50% strong bread flour, 30% lower protein flour (10% protein), 10% whole red fife and 10% dark rye.  9% prefermented flour is use and this time I’ve lowered the hydration to 75% because the 10% flour isn’t very absorptive of the water.

I realized that I hadn’t made any pizza in quite sometime.  My working on baguettes over the past several months got in the way ?. So 2 days ago I put together my go to sourdough pizza recipe from the pizza Community Bake.  I haven’t really many any changes to that recipe except that I now give the dough after cold retard 2 hours of RT final proof.  This has helped with a more open cornicione.  I’m still making 9” personal sized pizzas in my cast iron skillet.