Skibum's blog

Oh my! Great idea Josh! Any other great ideas like this would be most warmly welcomed.

Best regards, Brian

I have been skiing five days a week now for a while, so not much time to browse TFL. My baking thoughts have turned from bread to sweets. this is a three layer orange chiffon cake from ITJB, filled with apricot jam and chocolate butter cream and iced with the same chocolate. The chocolate didn't adhere to the orange slices, so I painted around them. YUMM!

Don't pay the ransom friends, I have escaped. Well between skiing and the winter Olympics it is hard to find time to bake and I have had no time to browse TLF for a coupe of weeks.

This was done from the book, but on this version I added sauteed onion to the last few stretch & folds.

BOY, do I EVER LIKE this bread! This was a full version of the ITJB rye to which I added 120 grams of re-hydrated granulated onion and garlic and remembered to account for the extra water this time. I used about 4 Tbs of the onion and 1Tbs of the garlic, using the water from the soak for the bake. I once again proofed my boules seam side down in a banneton, the baked seam side up Forkish style in a cast iron DO.

I love the 'organic bloom' this technique produces!

This was an orange chiffon cake and I will call it an upside down cake and explain that later. I used a spring form pan and manually sliced 3 layers using a vanilla fudge spread for one layer and a chocolate fudge for the other. The cake was finished with enrobing chocolate and I thought a sprinkling of ground almond and some sliced almonds would go well, as a ski bum I don't need to watch my weight.

Okay the Hungarian rolls filled with walnut are absolutely to die for! This is one of the best things I have ever taken out of my oven!

I baked a half recipe of Bakery Challah:

I followed the three stage build by the book and only varied from the formula at the proof and bake stage. I shaped a boule and proofed seam side down in my new brotform, then baked in a hot cast iron dutch oven. I did score the loaf and I thought it looked like I had deflated it, but the loaf sprang nicely and the seams burst organically.

Once again from Peter Reinhart's BBA, but I did change up a couple of things in this half version. I soaked 2 Tbs of dehydrated onion and 1/2 Tbs dehydrated garlic in boiling water. I reduced the amount of milk from his suggested 114g to 54g and used the onion water for the rest of the liquid.

I spied some chocolate hazelnut pastry in the deli yesterday and that set off the craving. I did a google search and came up with this recipe:

http://www.joyofbaking.com/biscotti/ChocolateHazelnutBiscotti.html

This bake was one half of Peter Reinhart's recipe from BBA. I used 50g of sweet levain and 50g yeast water levain. The dough more than doubled in an hour in the bulk ferment and even half the recipe tested the capacity of my Lodge DO. This makes a wonderful sandwich bread -- piled high with Montreal smoked meat and grainy mustard. YUMMM!

Starter

50g sweet levain

50g YW levain

128g dark rye flour

80g water

170g onion, sauteed in oil