Isand66's blog

My Lexi

      Last week I took a few days off for vacation and my wife and I decided to do a day trip to the Mecca of baking King Arthur Flour in Vermont.  It was a fun and long trip starting out with the delay on the ferry ride due to a backpack that nobody wanted to claim.

In any case we had a great day and visited a couple of cheese and maple syrup shops as well.

      This was an interesting experimental bread.  I decided to use a potato cut up into little pieces along with the polenta in the actual porridge.  I wanted to have actual pieces of potato in the bread and it worked like a charm.  It was especially interesting on the crust of the bread where the potatoes that were sticking out got nice and crisp like potato sticks.

I used a bottle of hard apple cider in the main dough hoping it would give a nice tart apple flavor but you don't really taste it very much so water will work just as well.

 The last batch of rolls I made were very rich so I wanted to make something a bit more lean this time.  I omitted the cream cheese and changed up some of the flours and used whole eggs and olive oil in place of the cream cheese and butter.

They came out very tasty and while not as rich and buttery as the last batch, they still make great burger buns and sandwich rolls as well.

    It's been a while since I baked with a Yeast Water starter and I now that cherries are in season and inexpensive I figured it was time to build one again.

It took a few days to bring the YW to life with a handful of cherries, water and a little honey.  Once it was ready to use I built up a levain in 2 stages and used a nice combination of flours including freshly milled whole wheat and durum flour.

Naturally I needed to add some cherries to the main dough and figured some walnuts would make this a winner.

   I wanted to use some fresh milled flour from my Mock Mill that I'm testing out so I through together a simple bread using fresh milled whole wheat, fresh milled Kamut and some barley flakes.

I do have to say I'm very impressed with the control you get with the Mock Mill.  I used the second finest settings and did one sift and reground the sifted out parts again.

The end result was a very tasty wholesome bread with a moderate crumb.

 It finally feels like summer here on Long Island, so that means it's time to fire up the Barbecue and throw on some hamburgers and hot dogs.  I whipped up a version of a yeasted bun I've made many times and changed it over to use a SD starter and made a few other flour swaps as well.

These ended up great and were nice and tasty and soft but not too soft to hold up to a grilled burger and hot dog.

This is another version of bread I baked last fall.  I changed up the flour combination and used a Durum starter as well.

I was very happy with the moist crumb and the combination of flours made for a perfect rye sandwich bread.  The crumb was perfect for this style of bread and I would certainly bake this one again.

Formula

 If you love onions this one is for you.  I had some leftover caramelized onions that my wife had cooked up so I decided to incorporate them into my next bread.  I thought adding some maple syrup would give this a nice overall sweetness and some Greek yogurt was added to soften the crumb.

I used a combination of medium rye, fresh whole wheat and French style flour from KAF.

I have not had time to post anything lately but finally this 3 day Memorial weekend has give me the chance to post.

Yesterday I made some smoked Baby Back ribs to bring to our friends Memorial Day party and I wanted to bring some nice rolls to go with them.  I have not made a Tangzhong style dough in a while and really wanted to make a dough that was nice and soft without adding butter or cheese.

I decided I also wanted the nice nutty flavor of Buckwheat which I thought would go well with Durum flour and some nice mashed red skinned potatoes.