I've been away from The Fresh Loaf for a while. I was still baking and blogging but didn't quite have time to also update the pages here. So, I'll keep it short and sweet for few things that I baked in the past week or two.
Ciabatta with wheat germs and olive oil (from Hamelman's Bread)
After last week’s super crusty bread, we decided to give our jaw a break with pan bread this week. Don’t get me wrong. I love crusty artisan bread but from time to time, you can’t help craving softer pan bread.
My croissant project is coming along nicely. I have been practicing on croissant/laminated dough for the past couple of months. The results are getting more consistent and predictable.
I usually make the laminated dough and shape few of them into croissants and the rest to something else (for change and variety). This week I made whole wheat laminated dough and made them into chocolate croissant.
I found this recipe in Dan Lepard’s Exceptional Cake cookbook. Given that it was book about cake, I didn’t expect to see baked goods with yeast in there, especially not for the dish called Krantz Cake.
Apparently (quoting Dan Lepard) yeast cake is a feature of German baking. I was curious to find out how yeast leavened cake would be different from baking powder or soda.
Generally, I don’t make fruit breads often. Not that I don’t like them. I just have the tendency to bake more seeds and grains breads. I have two big bags of golden raisins and dried cranberry (about 1.5 kg each) from CostCo sitting and taking room in the pantry that I so wanted to use them up. Hence, there have been and will be more fruit bread baking in the coming months.
It might makes you feel less guilty eating croissant. These croissants were made with 20% whole wheat flour.
Would it be classified as wholegrain croissants:P?
I used the recipe from Michel Suas's Advance Bread and Pastry. The recipe used preferment. The dough was quite soft and pliable and was relatively easy to work with when it came to rolling and lamination.
