Benito's blog

I tried to put together another variety of sourdough discard cracker this morning, furikake.  Those of you familiar with Japanese food will know that Furikake (振り掛け / ふりかけ) is a dry Japanese seasoning meant to be sprinkled on top of cooked rice, vegetables, and fish. It typically consists of a mixture of dried fish, sesame seeds, chopped seaweed, sugar, salt, and monosodium glutamate. ... Furikake is often brightly colored and flaky.

I haven’t been feeling great about my baking lately, I’d been over proofing my bread and really disappointed in how they turned out.  I decided that I needed to go back to a recipe that I’d made many times when I first started to bake sourdough, so I went back to Maurizio’s Beginner Sourdough from The Perfect Loaf.  For some reason the flavour of this bread always speaks to me.  However, I decided I still wanted some sort of add in, but one that wouldn’t negatively affect the crumb too much, so since I love sesame seeds I went with black and white sesame seeds.

This is another recipe from Full Proof Baking.  This is really simple just keep the butter cold and you’re golden.  Don’t throw away your discard, there are so many things to make with your discard.

I’ve been following Kirsten of FullProofBaking on Instagram and have been interested in trying her Butterfly Pea Flower Sourdough for sometime.  I finally purchased some butterfly pea flowers on Amazon and decided I’d try to bake this.

Butterfly pea flowers 14.5 g dried flowers, green leaves and stems plucked off.  Steeped in 360 g boiling water x 10 mins and cooled, then 342.5 g added to flour during autolyse.

Total Dough Weight 900 g

Bread flour 80%  

Whole Grain 20%  

On the weekend we decided that it’s been much too long since I’ve made pizza.  So using the same recipe for sourdough pizza that Will shared with us all during the Community Bake, I put together 4 dough balls so we could have four 9” pizzas over two days.  I didn’t use the diastatic malt, but I think without it I could allow the dough to cold ferment much longer.  Usually I bake after 48-72 hours in the fridge, today’s bake was the 48 hour cold ferment.  I’m thinking without the diastatic malt 72-96 hours would probably be even better.

My partner requested a cheddar and apple bread so I put together this iteration based on Kirsten’s Basic Open Sourdough recipe.

Levain build 1:2:2

20 g mature starter

20 g bread flour

20 g whole wheat flour

40 g water

311 g white bread flour.               74% including levain

46 g whole wheat flour.               21% including levain

This is an adaptation of a Tartine recipe with one of Maurizio’s and using generally the methods of FullProofBaking.  I attempted to score a leaf on the dough but was hilariously unsuccessful in my attempt.  It just looks like random scores on one side.

Levain build 1:2:2

20 g mature starter

20 g bread flour

20 g whole wheat flour

40 g water

311 g white bread flour.               74% including levain

I baked this bread a second time and adjusted what I was doing based on some comments and suggestions I received here and elsewhere.  Because the sweet potato should already be adding sugars to the dough I skipped the diastatic malt.  I also did bulk fermentation at a slightly lower temperature because I thought the last bake could have been a bit overproofed.  I also baked the bread differently based on an idea that Kirsten of FullProofBaking posted.  On the lowest rack I placed a roasting pan with rack and then baked the bread in my Dutch oven on this rack.

To celebrate the naming of my almost one year old starter John Dough, I decided to make biscuits for the first time.  Because I have just enough discard I am making the biscuits using John Dough’s discards.

I made small adjustments to a recipe from thekitchn.com.

This is my first time working with purple sweet potatoes.  I find that the flavour is slightly more floral than the more common orange variety.  I was hoping to have more oven spring from this but overall I’m fairly pleased with the bake.

To make about 900 g total dough 

Levain 20% 74 g 1:1:1 6 hours @ 78ºF

35 g starter 35 g water 35 g whole wheat flour 

Autolyse 2 hours

90% bread flour 331 g

10% white spring flour 41 g (I used Einkorn)

Diastatic malt 0.5% 2.045 g

Water 275 g