dabrownman's blog

I've been searching for a a nice sesame and poppy seeded hamburger bun that would stand up to our monthly, stacked,  piled high burger by not falling apart while still having a soft moist crumb that toasted up well.  I took Sylvia's bun recipe for a starting point and converted it to YW from commercial yeast.  Then we thought we would make some retarded cinnamon rolls out of the same dough since it seemed like the thing to do and a nice fit. 

No, No, No - My apprentice is not a nut!  This is a slightly more simple formula trying to achieve a balance between taste and holes.  Taste always wins out over holes and appearance in my book.  It has to taste good first before going to other wanted crumb and crust attributes.

we thought we would publish our masa recipe that folks seems to love more than others.  It is a little different and just plain delicious. Once you make your own masa, tortillas and tamales, and they don't have to be this fancy, you just won't want to buy them - even though you will.

I wanted to make some YW rolls that had a pretzel twist so we made some pretzel bread crumbs and used them to stick to the outside of some 15% White WW yeast water rolls.   We made some rolls using 4 little balls of dough per roll and some knotted rolls.  All were; retarded overnight, proofed and baked in ramekins.  Also cut the salt in half since the pretzel crumbs were very salty.

After baking several white, or nearly so, YW and SD breads in French styles, I wanted to go back to my favorite breads to make and eat (and re-stock the freezer) - rye based multi grain SD breads that were at least 50% whole grains with rye sprouts,  rye scald (with red rye malt), some Borodinski altus, some caraway, flax and pepitas (pumpkin) seeds.

This lunch was made with the 20% whole grain baggies.  After a busy weekend doing nothing much, it was nice to have some ready made sammy materials to use for lunch.  This YW bread was made for flavor as opposed for holes.  It came out of the freezer in good shape.

Had some left over grilled Japanese eggplant to go with leftover Holiday Ham, last nights salad, half a tomato, last of the brie cheese, home made Dijon mustard and some mayo.

After the last bake's attempt for flavor instead of holes, this bake was for baguette holes.  I also had some hemp seeds burning a hole in my pocket so thought they would be appropriate.  Burning, burning holes, holes and hemp are baggie proof and go way back to SF in the early 70's as far as I can personally attest.

Today we had a wonderful breakfast and lunch thanks to sweetbird's fine bread that had pistachios and soba noodles added to it by a 'butcher' or as Varda says a 'postmodernist'.  When toasted, this bread, like most, takes on a new life that is hearty and modern too.

As a classic smoked salmon, grilled chicken, tomato and basil feta cheese, lettuce and mushroom masterpiece - rarely attempted by the most professional sandwich artisan, this bread comes into its own saying 'You Know I Ain't No Slimy White Slice Sweetbird'

The other half of the puff paste we made the other day was used up on these tasty apple, pear  and cream cheese sleds.  This time I watched them to make sure these didn't over caramelize like the last variety.  I mixed in some apple jam in the cream cheese that is on the bottom and hidden.  Also, we reconstituted dried apricots, raisins and cranberries in some bourbon and also added fresh minced ginger to the chopped apples and pears that were sauted with some brown sugar and mixed spice.   The middle of the sled was docked to keep it from puffing and make

Yeast water multi-grain baggies, toasted with butter, apple ginger jam and homemade sage hot breakfast sausage on top.  Served with a springy yeast water strawberry pancake, maple syrup and over easy egg.  Throw in some nice coffee and breakfast becomes something special on a spring weekday.