Benito's blog

Gary posted a little while ago about using potato flakes instead of the usual flour based tangzhong.  Although potato flakes are more expensive than flour per gram, at least the good quality ones without additives they have one advantage.  Because the flakes are prepared from cooked potatoes, the starches are already gelatinized.  Apparently even through drying to make the flakes, although the water is gone from the starches, they retain whatever change that occurred so you do not need to precook the flakes to use them. 

I had a technical issue with this bake that I hadn’t experienced in quite sometime.  I didn’t dust the couche or the bottoms (bottoms facing up in the couche) of the baguettes sufficiently, so when I attempted to transfer them off the couche, onto the transfer board and then finally onto the parchment lined cookie tray, two of the three stuck at each point.  This resulted in some pretty significant degassing and really compromised the crumb.  The third baguette did suffer nearly as much and was much better looking.

The restaurant in Petty Harbour Nfld that always made the best lobster rolls I have ever eaten disappointed me for the first time this past July.  Because of that, I decided I wanted to make rolls that I could use to make shrimp rolls.  Lobster is crazy expensive at the moment and my partner isn’t a fan of it, so why bother with lobster.  I wanted to make the rolls so that two sides could be toasted in butter on my cast iron skillet.  The slice in each roll would be vertically cut rather than horizontally so these would not be hotdog buns.

Inspired by Tony (CalBeachBaker) I decided to make a batch of taralli this evening.  I made minor changes such as subbing in 10% whole red fife flour and using rosemary and ground peppercorns instead of fennel seeds.  They are really easy to make and quite enjoyable to eat.  I’d reduce the rosemary from 8 g to perhaps 6 g in the next batch as the rosemary was quite strong.

The last of my einkorn flour was used to make this loaf.  Einkorn hasn’t been easy to find, one of the places I used to go to for interesting flours has changed hands and the new owners are not selling as many varieties of flour anymore.  Since einkorn is a very weak flour I use it in the tangzhong since in its preparation the proteins are denatured so any gluten potentially from the einkorn won’t contribute to the gluten structure of the final bread.

Time for pizza dinner again.  I’ve gone back to all purpose flour and spelt to achieve a more open crumb.  I added a cold retard overnight for convenience, extensibility and more flavor in the crust.

I love sour cherries and I love chocolate, so when I came across this cake recipe I knew I had to make it.

I needed to get a challah baked quickly because we were hosting a last minute brunch for which I was going to bake a ham, cheese, mushroom, red pepper and onion strata.  So with little time to plan I bake this challah that relies on IDY for leavening.  I was surprised at the slight tearing that this loaf had between the strands.  At the time of baking the dough didn’t bounce back at all with the poke test.  This is usually quite a reliable sign that the challah is well fermented, but in this case it could have used a bit more time in final proofing.

I  wanted to try adding an egg to my country sourdough again.  I’ve seen other bakers on IG post their bakes and some of them achieve quite incredible rise and open crumb when adding an egg to their otherwise lean dough recipes.  Then again, these same bakers always post super open crumb anyways, so who knows if the addition of the egg adds to this or just adds to the rise.  When adding the egg one has to compensate for the water in the egg (74%) and reduce the water used to make the dough.

I want to maintain my skills in making baguettes.  Unlike Alan and Don who has really developed their skills for the long haul, I find unless I make them every few months my skills backslide.  I haven’t made baguettes with inclusions in a long long while so decided to add a handful of poppyseeds to the dough.