loydb's blog

I was looking for an easy way to make a slab of butter for laminated dough, and this worked a dream. I used the two sizes of vac bag in the first pic to plan out how big I wanted to roll the dough out. Then I vac sealed the butter (straight out of the fridge, no need to soften), flattened initially by hand, then used the rolling pin to fill all the corners of the bag with butter. 

To remove, put the bag in the freezer for 30-45 mins until it is frozen hard. Cut open and peel away the bag. It is soft enough to work after 10-15 minutes sitting on the dough.

It's been awhile... I've started venturing out again beyond my weekly sourdough. This was primarily spurred on by starting to get my whole grain from Barton Springs Mill instead of Azure. I cannot heap enough praises on the flavor and aroma from everything I've got from there. The ryes, in particular, are stunning. More on ryes down the line, I've had some good successes there.

After a brief dalliance with PR's whole wheat sandwich bread, I'm back to my traditional sourdough loaf (starter + water + flour + salt). These were around 80% hydration.The sandwich bread was delicious, but didn't keep nearly as well as the traditional loaf.

I had shoulder surgery a little over three months ago, which cut into the baking time pretty severely. I spent the last ten days rebuilding my starter, and made my first loaf yesterday. 100% fresh-milled whole wheat sourdough using Reinhart's basic whole wheat bread recipe (except no yeast).

We've been craving pizza for awhile, and I decided to use some of my dwindling supply of KAAP to make a batch of Roman Pizza Dough from PR's American Pie. I used some jarred tomato sauce that I modded with oregano & basil from the garden and shallots. Some asiago & mozz for cheese, mushrooms & pepperoni for toppings, and we are good to go.

We're probably having the other half of the dough for dinner tomorrow... :)

I've been baking yeasted breads while I rebuilt a starter. Yesterday was the first bake with it, and I'm pleased.

The recipe is the San Francisco sourdough from BBA. I milled 5% rye and 95% hard white wheat.

I did stretch and folds every 20 minutes for the first two hours, then left it alone for three hours. Shaped and put into a banneton, then into the fridge to proof for two hours.

It's very lightly sour, which I expect from a new starter. I'll see how it develops over the next month before making a decision to keep or not.

I've been on hiatus since we moved back to Austin, but since we're now in the middle of a flour and bread shortage (because apparently everyone is suddenly going to bake!), I've started milling flour for myself and my friends, and am back to baking my own again.

I don't currently have an active starter, so this is a yeasted loaf, about 75% fresh milled hard white wheat and 25% KABF.

This is a continuation of tweaking Maurizio Leo's Best Sourdough Recipe My first efforts can be found in my blog here.

Back when I first started this blog, I was trying out the San Francisco starter from sourdo.com. I was never able to get a flavor I loved from it. Almost six years down the line, I've learned a ton about sourdough in the interim. I was also growing bored with the rye strain I've been baking with for the last few years -- so I'm trying again with it. I've been building the starter for the last week, finally it was active enough to use.

I've been very quiet -- mainly because I've spent the last year baking the same recipe over and over, tweaking it slightly until I've got it completely reproducible. I've varied the additions (various seeds, dried fruits, etc.), but the base bread has been the same. For 2018, I'm going to venture out of this comfort zone and get more experimental again.