Skibum's blog

One of my favourite recipes on TFL has always been Floyd's blueberry cream cheese braid. I used a batch of pulla dough I had on the go for a half batch of the recipe. The fruit filling was 1/2 cup diced strawberry, 1/2 cup blueberries, 1/4 cup diced raspberries, 2Tbs lemon juice, 1 Tbs icing sugar, 1 Tbs balsamic vinegar and 1Tbs corn starch. I cooked it down until it was a syrup and otherwise followed the published recipe. What can I say but YUMMM!!!

Happy baking, ski

My summer project has been to learn the batard shape and actually achieve an ear. So far, very mixed results, with a sort of ear on this bake. Getting the right timing on both bulk and proofing stages so that I can actually score with a lame has been surprisingly difficult with more failures than successes. I would go back to baking Forkish style boules, but my seams likely won't open. hmmmmm.

I simply have not been able to make overnight work! The last time I tried, I finished the final bulk stretch at 5:30 pm and refrigerated it until 11:30 to slow things down. Here is what I had at 7:30 the next morning:

I meant to start this batch early yesterday, but welcomed an old friend from out of town in the morning, pushing bake my mixing schedule back. It was HOT here yesterday with the mercury touching 32C outside and my kitchen 24 - 25C. I am following David Snyder's San Joaquin Sourdough formula, but with the elevated temperatures, reduced time between folds to 20 minutes for the first 4 and down to 30 minutes in the bulk stage. After the first 30 minutes the dough had risen by nearly a half.

I am getting my chops down now on the Country Blonde. I like the flavour, crust and chew of the crumb. This was aslo my first attempt at David Snyder's San Jose Sour Dough. My SJSD needs work, but this is a nice tasting bread!  I need to work on my shaping and scoring. At these high ambient temperatures 45 minutes was too long and the loaf tough to score with a lame. Forty minutes would have been better.

Satisfying to get a good result on my latest take 6. Takes 4 and 5 were over proofed with my new summer kitchen temperatures. All winter and spring my kitchen was a steady 68F Now that we have real summer it is running 73-75F and BOY does this temperature change mess with bulk rise and proofing schedules!

I always enjoy this enriched sweet bread with a cup of good strong coffee -- anytime! I only changed up one thing from my last  back and that was shoe horning it into my oval brotform to proof. Proofing in a hard sided form resulted in more vertical rise vs proofing a braided loaf on a linen couche. I liked the result:

After proofing I egg wshed, sprinkled sugar and ground almond along with a few almond slices. Time for another slice!

Happy baking folks! Ski

Well, I thought I would try out my new oval shaped brotform and I like the result. Like my round form it is made for 500g of dough. I used a half of KF's formula, then divided it for the two small forms.

The dough has just been placed in the brotforms to proof. After 3 hours the dough had risen above the forms comfortable. Each loaf was 612 grams and perhaps the upper limit for these forms.

Well it was nearly a complete gong show, but fortunately the bread turned out nicely. I followed Ken Forkish's directions to the T this time with a now healthy and very active levain. I baked this a couple of weeks ago with a pretty new levain and also put the bulk ferment in the fridge overnight. A re-read of the formula revealed no refrigeration of the bulk fermentation. After an overnight on the counter, I had a huge volume of 80% hydration dough -- at least 3.5x grown in volume. 

After shaping I had my doubts the dough would fit into the banneton. My fears were confirmed.

I LOVE this bread!!! I recently made two full batches with onion sliced so fine it disappears in the crumb. This time I followed the recipe to a T, for a change.

One of my best friends had a birthday recently and I thought the best thing I could send him was some New York style deli rye. I sent big Tom a loaf a year ago. Now Tom is well over 300 lbs and said the loaf lasted about two hours. Tom is also the best non commercial chef I have ever known with a gifted natural touch in the kitchen.