We love these English muffins and try to make them a little bit different each time we make them. This time we used some of the left over SD levain for the panettone. We made them the thickness that is called for in the recipe at 3/4” for the first time. Normally we make them thinner since the puff so much.
After the last panettone fiasco where they were under baked and plopped themselves onto the carpet when overturned on the skewers to cool, we decided to do some origami panettone molds out of one inside layer of parchment paper and one outside layer of regular printer paper.
This bake was similar to the last one with a few additions. We added some spelt and rye upping the whole grains to 60%. We upped the water roux another 40% or so because we liked the last bake so much and 40 percent more of fine tasting has to be teeth dropping,. We added aromatic seeds including coriander, anise, black and brown caraway and fennel. We also put in some pumpkin and sunflower seeds and some pistachio nuts.
I had some KA WWW flour that was almost 8 months old hanging around doing nothing. We like whole grains around here mostly but needed to get rid of the WWW in some kind of bread. We hate throwing flour away for any reason if possible even if it flour we don’t use much.
This is an continuation of the last multi-grain SD bake except that the hydration is slightly lower at 68%, the multi-grain flours were 54 %, the add in goodies are increased substantially since this bread has multi-grain sprouts to go with the multi-grain soaker and we also have pumpkin and sunflower seeds, as well as, pistachio and filbert nuts with a hint of prunes too.
We had one more batch of saved white Italian starter left over from the panettone bake which produced so much excess starter it is nearly obscene. It was built up over 3 stages and had been previously refrigerated for several days. We decided to do an Italian bread and was torn between an Altamura Pope’s Hat or the Chacon it eventually inspired.
This is the first bread bake in 2013 and we wanted to get back to our favorite every day bread type; a sourdough multi-grain with a multigrain scald or with multigrain sprouts or both. This time we use a scalded soaker and finally got around to putting some cream cheese in the mix ala Ian’s many breads with cheese.
2 days before dough mixing we got the 100% hydration levain going over two builds that took 12 hours and then it was retarded for 36 hours in the fridge
Karin had a great post for Dan Lepard's brat filled Stilton cheese puff paste appetizers here:
Dan Lepard's Stilton Crust Sausage Rolls - My First Bake of 2013
