dabrownman's blog

Boule and crumb.

We are continuing to discover a better method of summer baking in the Cuisinart mini oven.  This time we tried Sylvia’s steaming method by using a 1 cup Pyrex measuring  cup half full of water with a dish rag rolled up inside and microwaving it before putting it onto the preheated 500 F mini oven.

It's almost been a week since the last sandwich for lunch post and some of us are getting hungry.

grilled 50% whole grain with sprouts seeds and nuts,  Amish Swiss cheese with Italian salami with Brownman pickles and pico.

A dinner snuck in there with herbed and seeded ciabatta bun for the hammy, caramelized onion and mushrooms with some baked mini oven wedge fries.

We took 100 g of our last bake:  The SD / YW Chacon Revisited – 90% Whole Grain, Multigrain Sprouts, Walnut and Sage Paste, and Pumpkin Seeds and used that as the starter for the pizza and pide dough.  It was weird having nuts, seeds and sprouts in the final dough but sure made forming the crusts fun and interesting with these add-ins tearing holes when ever they were encountered :-)

After having such a nice loaf turn out from the last Chacon bake, we thought we would do everything we could to mess it up – and we did mess up more than half of it without much difficulty at all.  These things happen when you try new things.  Not to worry when we can learn from near disasters.

With the freezer full of half loaves of recent bread bakes we had time to do some other cooking and grilling.  We ran across these great apricots.  Never seen anything like them - just beautiful color - inside and out.  Almost too good to eat!

So some apricot, nectarine and ginger jam was soon to follow.

This 40% whole grain bread is a combination YW and SD starter, seeded, multi-grain that does not have sprouts or a scald.  The hydration of 79% is not too much for a bread with so much whole Rye, WW, spelt and WWW.  There is also semolina in the starter and the dough as well.  There is a little potato flake, red and white rye malt, wheat germ and 6 kinds of seeds.  Sunflower-25 g, anise-3g, hemp-10g, coriander-2g and fennel-3g with only the flax seeds ground into a flour.  Since the bread was not retarded to bring out additional SD flavor it had a slight t

Some recent bread made into lunches , the last bloom of the jackaranda and a blueberry, blackberry, chocolate cheese cake.

Sweet Tader Toast with caramelized minneola marmelade

Here is a sample of what the darker side of bread baking will reveal if you don't keep you apprentice on a short leash.  I wish that was all of them but these are just the ones I found in the garage.  More good deals like these and my apprentice will be broke :-)  She said we have to use the 6 sided one next but wonder how you have to shape for that!

She looks pretty guilty don't you think?

We always seem to have smoked and BBQ ribs for many holidays. This Memorial Day was no exception.  In KCMO where I grew up, the ribs are famous and are always served with Wonder Bread.  I was looking for a different bread when I saw Floyd’s Sweet Potato Rolls in the home page.   I though this might make a great bread to go with ribs.

A real Brown Plate Special with 2 different tamals, chipoltle sauce, red curry mac & cheese, brown and black re-fried beans, corn tortilla chips, Baja grilled chicken and a touch of guacamole. Plus this weeks amber ale and our take on Hanseata's Wild Rice brown bread.

.