Isand66's blog

    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.

  It's nice to be home after a two week business trip to Asia.  I'm always happy to bake some fresh bread after eating pretty crappy bread most of my trip.

I used some Buckwheat flour I had recently purchased from KAF and combined it with some freshly milled hard red whole wheat along with some French style flour and potato flour.  Barley flakes were added for some additional flavor.

This was one of those, what was I thinking breads.  I had read about a porridge bread someone else posted about where they soaked the cracked rye overnight in water, and for some reason that translated to me as let's soak whole durum berries in water overnight and make a porridge from them.  I should have known that I didn't do something right when the porridge was taking forever to solidify and didn't absorb all of the water as usual.  Next time I need to either crack the durum berries first or soak them overnight in hot boiling water.  The berries were soft when added

      Usually with this list of ingredients I would either make a soaker or a porridge but instead I decided to add some crunch to the bread.  I used a combination of rolled oats, barley flakes, and cracked wheat and simply added them into the flour mixture of French style KAF, fresh milled whole wheat and fresh milled whole rye.  I added some dehydrated toasted onions for a little extra flavor as well.

I also coated the outside of the dough with malted wheat for an extra level of crunch.

    I was in the mood for a nice soft flavorful bread, so since I had some fresh milled Kamut flour ready to go, I mixed it with a good amount ricotta cheese, olive oil and some Artisan style flour from KAF.  The end result was a dough that was soft as silk and ended up with a wonderful soft and flavorful crumb, perfect for sandwiches, toast and grilled bread.