dabrownman's blog

Hanseata’s wild rice bread looked so enticing we had to move it up to the top of the bake list.  To her recipe, which hardly needed any changes at all if one of us was sane and not barking, we used high alcohol ice beer for most of the water and upped the hydration about 10 %.  We didn’t use all beer for the liquid because it had to pass quality control to make sure it was not spoiled in some way.  It actually took two or three tastings just to make sure, but it finally passed.

We have been eating lunch well the last day or two with our last Pretzel Roll bake for sandwiches - P and J and Baja Grilled Chicken with Grilled Veggies.  The J is caramelized Minneola Marmalade.  There is part of a croissant, some nice red pepper hummus, cucumber salad and fruits and veggies of all kinds.  All very healthy and my assistant cleaned herself up for a photo with her new bow!

We were inspired, even though the wrong time of year for laminated doughs with it being 8o F inside and 105 F outside in AZ, by txfarmer's croissants and Danish pastries. 

A nice lunch for two featuring store bought (inside out and grilled) and home made ciabatta, beer can and teriyaki chicken.

With some Mojo de Ajo (with achoite and chili flakes) and the apple strawberry and ginger crisp.

We haven’t made SD ciabatta in a long time and wanted to make one that included some YW in the levain, had some semolina, rye and WWW for flavor while using mostly AP and a little bread flour for the rest of the dry.  We added some VWG to up the gluten of this dough and improve its crumb.  We also took some of our standard pizza dough ingredients; the mix of herbs, garlic and sun dried tomato and added them with some chia seeds.

home for the summer means 2 lunch sammys every day.  Something to look forward to!  One was semolina SD with brie, chicken and pepper jack grilled cheese with home made Dijon mustard.  Made another batch of mustard today but it tales 6 weeks to mature - not that it lasted that long :-(  The other sammy has two different SD and YW starters mixed in the same bread but each slice is a different variety.  It is served with our vapor aged white cheddar and pepper jack Mac and Cheese that is modestly flavored with Thai red curry paste.

We were inspired by Varda’s recent Priests Hat  Altamura Style Bread Revisited here: http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/28663/altamura-style-bread-revisited 

For breakfast we had a nice YW Buckwheat Apple Pecan Pancake loose based on sweetbird's bread but using YW as leaven and milk to thin it out to pancake consistency.  Very nice!

Using the same filling and frosting as the YW Cinnamon Rolls, you can make a nice banana bread cake by substituting your favorite banana bead recipe for the dough - and you might need some sprinkles too!  Much better than plain old banana bread and 3 times as fattening too :-)