dabrownman's blog

For this pizza crust the girls wanted to go back to our Focaccia Romana  crust that has garlic rosemary and sun dried tomato.  I said OK but didn’t tell them that the dough would be SD instead of their favorite poolish one.

We had pinched 40 g of fully ripe 100% multi-grain levain from last Friday’s bake and then fed it 40 g each of AP and water making this the 5th feeding for this levain.  We let it sit on the counter for 2 hours and it easily doubled.

We wanted to use Josh’s 4 day, 4 feedings, 2 retard levain method and compare it to our normal 3 day, 3 feeding 1 retard method for flavor and sour.  The levain rose well using Josh’s method.

Lucy is so excited in finding out that her Mice and Pumpkin won runner up in the Arizona Republic’s Halloween Baking Contest.  She won a gift card and this Wednesday she has her entry featured in the Food and Drink section of the newspaper along with the winner and the other runner up.

My wife and daughter are the cookie dessert makers around here and they are very good at it.  We are quickly getting to the Holiday season when cookies and desserts will be abundant.  But, you need to add this one to your holiday must bake list:

It comes from Tonia’s ‘The Gurney Sack’ here

We are going to call this bake out WBD bake along with the Mice Guarding the Pumkin.  Nest year we will try to get it baked on the right day for a change - or maybe not :-)

We looked everywhere but couldn’t find any SD white bread.   So, for this Friday’s bake we decided to make one.  Lucy managed to find 8 whole grains to grind for the whole grain portion and then decided to throw in some semolina to make a 9 grain sourdough.

After seeing Dwayne’s Mice Bake I had to do one ….eeeerrrr…..two and throw in a free pumpkin for them to guard.  Instead of pumpkin, we roasted some sweet potato to get rid of as much water as possible.

The dough was leavened by a poolish, enriched and sweetened with added pumpkin pie spice to bring out the Thanksgiving smell in the house as they baked.  I’m starting to get in holiday mood even though it is more than a month away.

2013 The Fresh Loaf Dabrownman’s Blog

1/4/2013 - Panettone - The Last Bake of 2012

1/4/2013 - New Year's Day Pizza and Banana Bread Cupcakes

1/5/2012 - Hanseata’s Sausage Filled Puff Pastry with Cheese

I have been messing around with bun recipes trying to get one the girls would eat as opposed to the store bought ones.  This time Lucy finally got one to work and we had enough time to let them rise properly – the main problem with the slow rising SD ones.

We decided to make more of a white bread this week and to put some prunes in it since we haven’t put any fruits in bread since we baked babka this morning – but before that it has been a while.

This a was repeat of a similar recipe found here

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/27858/yeast-water-glazed-spiced-walnut-bourbon-fruit-chocolate-chip-almond-granola-streusel-pol