Happy holidays to everyone and happy baking.
I was lucky enough to get some baking goodies from my wife. A proper bench scraper, bowl scraper, and two books that will get me trying some new breads.
Here's today's sourdough loaves for your viewing pleasure. Crumb shots to follow after we rip into these with turkey dinner tonight.
Well, it's been almost 6 months since I last baked any bread. I made some pizzas during that time, but no bread. The hot summer months just curb the motivation to get the oven on for hours. The itch to bake bread got almost as unbearable as all that store bought bread.
We were counting down the days that we could come back to Phoenix, AZ. One of the hi-lights of our last trip in May was Pizzeria Bianco. This place has been heralded as having the best pizza in North America. The jury may still be out on that one, but it sure blew our minds. We also picked up a baguette from their bakery location, Pane Bianco. I have to say, I am not a fan of this baguette. Nice chew and crumb structure, but the flavour is more towards an Italian style (go figure) of bread - no nuttiness and a bit on the salty side. The french style
Here are some relevant and not so relevant past bakes and things.
Multi-Grain Levain with many, many seeds.
Some healthy buttermilk spelt flour pancakes with fresh blueberry maple syrup.
After taking the summer off of baking bread (too hot in house) I took the opportunity of our recent long weekend to bake up some Neopolitan style pizzas on the grill. As usual with my pizzas, I used unglazed quarry tiles and a grill flare-up method to re-create that fire hot environment a traditional forno would give. No shots of the wild mushroom, goat cheese and arugula pizzas I made, but here are the Margheritas. The very puffed up cornichione makes the pizzas look like the crust was thick and deep, but it was actually about a 1/4 of an inch thick, just the way we like
Since last summer when I first tried making pizza on my outdoor grill using unglazed quarry tiles, I have been itching to try again. This time I decided to do a simple Margherita pizza so the crust would be the star of the show. Homemade tomato sauce, bocconcini, basil. Crust had organic stone ground whole wheat with a touch of rye. The two medium sized pizza's turned out nicely, with a nice sweet tone in the crust due to the whole wheat flour. I tend to like thin crust pizzas, with a larger cornicione (outer edge crust).
Today I baked up some levain boules and a Tartine Country Loaf. I can't shake this sourdough kick since returning from San Francisco. I tweaked my roaster/steaming method a bit to enhance the Tartine crust caramelization. I am very happy with the results. The adjustments to the steaming method really made the crust thin and crispy, and added a more complex flavour.
The combination of dreary weather foiling my landscape photography and a new camera resulted in a post bake shutterbug frenzy.
Oddly, all this time baking bread, I have never tried making an olive loaf. I love olive loaves but for some reason never attempted one until now. Having just recently been given the Tartine book as a gift, I used the idea of using olives, herbs and lemon zest. I also baked up a few levain loaves to fix that San Francisco sourdough craving I have been having.
I have been on a higher % rye kick for a while now and decided to bake up a few to stock me up for December. When I say higher %, I know these aren't quite high, but for me, I haven't really tried anything higher then 40% prior to this. Maybe a Danish Rye qualifies as higher than 40%...
