codruta's blog

pizza margherita

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I made a pizza last week, that turned out very good.  I addapted the recipe from hamelman's BREAD. I made a stiff levain instead of biga, and omit the oil. I used canned tomatoes made by me last summer, fresh mozzarella, dried oregano, and fresh basil added in the end. I put the stone at the lowest level in my gas oven, and the pizza was done in 7-8 minutes. It's the best I can do at home. The crust was absolutely delicious!!!

1.2.3. flo's recipe

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I took cranbo suggestion and made this loaf with my new starter, using flo's 1.2.3. method. This is how my bread turned out. I'd say it's very pretty. It is more sour than my regular breads, but I eat a slice a few hours after baking it, so I guess the aroma wasn't fully settled. Tomorrow I'l be able to feel the real flavor, I hope.

New STARTER from scratch

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I made a new starter few days ago, just to taake photos of the process.

I started with 100g (tap) water, 50g AP flour and 50g rye flour, let it sit 24 hours at room temperature. It almost tripled it's volume.

The next day I switched to a 12 hours feedeing schedule, keeping 75g culture, adding 75g water, 50g AP flour and 25g rye flour. Here are some pictures taken in day 2, 3, 4

vermont sourdough, an ode from Timisoara

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This bread is problably a classic, everybody seems to love it. And how comes one not to? I usually try to bake and eat more whole wheat breads, but this bread is hard to resist to. I followed the recipe "by the book", with 10 hours retard in the fridge, baking them directly from the fridge, and I suspect both breads were just a little bit underproofed. Probably an hour at room temperature would have been a better thing to do.

hamburger buns

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I was in a search for the perfect hamburger bun for a long time. When I say "perfect", I mean perfect for my personal taste. I've tried Peter Reinhart recipe from BBA, I've tried different recipes form diferrent sites, I've tried Tangzhong method, all with wonderful results... but not perfect.

four or five grain levain

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I don't know why I've waited so long to make this bread, after buying hamelman's book. I've done it before, from intructions giving on this blog, which were very helpful, btw. For grains, I used a mix of fennel seeds, flaxseeds, spelt berries and oat bran. I retarded the dough overnight, omitted the yeast as instructed, and I baked it directly from the fridge. For the final fermentation, the instructions weren't very clear to me... in case I opted for retarding the dough overnight, it still gets an hour of fermentation on room temperature, or after shaping goes directly in the fridge??