Flour.ish.en's blog

The dough is the Tartine Basic Country Bread. The formula of the polenta bread can be found in Tartine Bread (page 93). I added pumpkin seeds, corn oil, fresh rosemary and blue corn polenta instead of the usual variety. It follows a similar approach as the porridge breads in Tartine Book #3 by using a polenta soaker. The soaker was too wet. Nothing that can't be fixed by dehydrating it in the oven until it becomes more like a paste. Another change I made to the Tartine method was an overnight cold retard in the fridge during bulk rise.

Didn't know making panettone was a challenge until I read a recent article on the New York Times referring to this traditional Italian bread as "the Mount Everest of baking."  I tasted an exceptional piece of panettone made by Jim Lahey. Met him on his book tour in New York city when he spoke about his new book The Sullivan Street Bakery Cookbook. How difficult could it be to make the panettone armed with a detailed five-page recipe in the cookbook? This is what I've found.

This is different from the traditional challah. From a baker's perspective, the sprouted wheat challah has many things going for it. The use of sprouted wheat and there is no other flour to help or mask its true nature. It is enriched with only egg yolks, producing a tender and creamy crumb. Lastly, no butter is added, making it suitable for a kosher diet. I think the store-bought sprouted wheat flour shines and finds its true expression in the making of this challah loaf, a recipe from Bread Revolution by Peter Reinhart.

The chocolate cherry sourdough bread recipe is published recently in the New York Times article, "slicing through the myths to rethink bread." The article reviews the new bread book, Modernist Bread, chronicling the history and science of the bread making in-depth. It addresses the key question: how do you make the best bread possible?

This is not a bagel, hahaa! It’s a 69% Swiss rye, shaped in a circular ring so that it can be hung from the ceiling during the long winter months from the Alpine region in Switzerland.

While I grew up eating white bread, making complex, robust and nutritious breads, have been my ultimate goal. My experience in making rye bread is limited. Therefore, I’ve turned to Stanley Ginsberg’s The Rye Baker for guidance and inspiration. He did not disappoint.

If you like the flavor of licorice in jelly beans or fennel in sausages, you may like ground anise in breads too. I have not used anise seeds before in breads. But, why not? This unique and warm spice enlivens the fig and hazelnut bread. For the start, the sweetness of dried figs and the smoky nutty notes of roasted hazelnuts bring big flavor to the bread. Just the right amount. The surprising finish of anise is merely the icing on the cake, I mean, the bread. There is just so much to like about this bread.

Breaking this bread is tantamount to opening a holiday present. At least, it feels that way when I cut the bread. The abundant good eats: olives, walnuts, sunflower seeds, herbs de Provence, lemon zest, filled the interior to the rim, are what make this bread sing. 

I’ve been experimenting with sprouted whole wheat flour (KA flour, not the home milled varieties) wondering what’s the upper limit I can deploy, without compromising the decent open crumb texture. Started with 30% and then increased it to 50%, a few days ago. Mistakenly I put in 100 grams more water than intended. I had no choice but to add a little more sprouted flour. Unfortunately, at the stage after autolyze, the dough won’t be agreeable with that much more flour. Gritted my teeth and, reluctantly, I had to deal with a much wetter dough than I’m comfortable with.

This bread was inspired by dabrownman and lucy’s “a special Saturday” sprouted multigrain bread (April 14). He commented on my 100% sprouted struan bread (April 16) and suggested I should try making this bread, since I wanted something with similar characteristics to the Vermont sourdough.