Benito's blog

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.

Blasphemy, I know what the Baguette Brigade will say about these, Blapshemy!!!  Oh well, I do not care.  I was in the mood to do something with chocolate and had started the mix for these Bouabsa baguettes.  I added 100 g of Lindt 70% dark chocolate which is always a good pick me up.  I’m not sure I’ve seen anyone add chocolate to their baguettes, but I have to admit I haven’t done a search.  In all likelihood it isn’t an original idea.

I decided I’d try to apply some of what I’ve learned making baguettes to my hearth loaves.  One thing that has been in the back of my mind for a while has been whether or not my use of high protein Canadian bread flours 13.3% protein could be preventing my heart loaves from having a more open crumb.  I know that achieving an open crumb is multi factorial and for many not worth the trouble, but it is something I wanted to see if I could eventually achieve.

I threw together a formula with:

50% strong bread flour

30% low protein (10%) white flour