I was pressed for time and was tasked with bringing bread to my family’s Thanksgiving dinner yesterday. The previous time I made rolls with Nfld savoury I didn’t use enough to taste them as much as I would have liked. This time the Mt Scio savoury flavour was lovely and the milk rolls were enjoyed by all.
I got my hands on some good stoneground whole red fife so wanted to incorporate it into my milk bread. I haven’t used any red fife for a long while so it was due. Because of the issues with gluten breakdown that seems to happen with red fife, I decided to use it all in the tangzhong, 20% since the gluten in the tangzhong won’t matter since it is cooked.
I had some pepitas and a handful of sunflower seeds lying around so decided to add them to this loaf.
I’ve been wanting to try baking this style of bread for some time, but just couldn’t get my nerve up to trying it. Despite its name, it seems that it is really an Asian style of bread. I’m guessing that the Danish part of it is that it is somewhat like a danish as in the pastry. Also, this isn’t something I could try during the heat of the summer and this week we are finally having some normal autumn weather.
I’ve tried adding an egg to my standard country sourdough but hadn’t tried adding one to a 100% whole wheat sourdough. Given the benefits of an egg in bread, leavening, lightness of crumb, fluffiness and thin crisp crust, a bread that is 100% whole wheat should theoretically greatly benefit from the addition of an egg.
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.
