StevenSensei's blog

I've really been enjoying the experiments these past few months with adding things into my bread. Olives, Sunflower Seeds, Pumpkin Seeds, Miso ... The list goes on!  As I have explored the bread I have also been exploring this website more and more. One of the recipes that stuck out was this one for Flax and Sunflower Sourdough that was modified from the Tartine 3 book by Danni3ll3. See their ORIGINAL POST HERE and you will see immediately why this was an attractive bake. 

A few bakes back I tried the recipe for this from Tartine Bread. The results were....well....unacceptable. The recipe as written in the book is flat out wrong, and while I was able to save the bread and have something to eat that week I knew it needed to be adjusted and revisited. See Original Post Here. 

After reading some replies from other kind bakers here and doing some thinking I came up with the following formula.

Time to try to make a raisin bread...and might as well go to the Whole Grain version....and might as well do sprouted grain as well. To that end I took the recipe from the book and tweaked it a bit and this is the result. 

RECIPE AND CALCULATIONS HERE

RECIPE AND CALCULATIONS HERE

It’s golden week in Japan which means we have a few national holidays in a row, which also means time to cook and bake. I knew that I wanted to make some crispy pork belly and turn it into a Perfect Bhan Mi Sandwich. 

RECIPE AND CALCULATIONS HERE

I’ve used semolina in my “weekly” bread for quite a while, but I’ve never done a mostly semolina bread before. Originally this bread only called for fennel…but I didn’t pay attention to HOW MUCH fennel it needed and I didn’t have enough. Necessity is the mother of improvisation in this case so I used anise seed to make up the total weight needed. There was another bread that had the combination of fennel and anise so I figured why not. 

Oh how I wanted these to be good. The ingredient list was simple. The process looked simple. I even found Graham Flour at a specialty baking shop. However, the fact that the book didn't include a picture of the finished product should have been my very first clue. 

INGREDIENTS AND CALCULATION HERE

Growing up I remember eating whole wheat pita (commercially produced) to have veggie sandwich pockets. I figured it was time to give this a try and see if I could get a nice pocket bread myself. Following the instructions in Whole Grain Breads was not difficult and with the use of a stand mixer to do the actual gluten development I found this to be surprisingly easy. 

RECIPE AND CALCULATIONS HERE

Day 1 - Mix the soaker and biga and leave overnight. 

In all honesty this bread wasn't planned until the day before I started my bake. I was planning on something else and then I stumbled across this thread from our very own Benny! 

Red Miso Furikake (Sesame seeds and Nori) sourdough

Reading through the Tartine book my curiosity was peaked by some of the various flavor combinations. The idea of sourdough with roasted walnuts, green olives, some herbs...and lemon made me curious in the best of ways. Thankfully it is just a standard sourdough but with inclusions. A LOT of inclusions. 62% of inclusions. So many inclusions that I was a bit concerned when it was being mixed, proofed, and shaped that it might be more inclusion than bread!

FULL RECIPE AND BREAD CALCULATIONS HERE

My better half has been craving a hamburger for a few weeks now. As the resident bread baker who can guarantee that the bread will not have dairy (allergic), it falls to me to make sure we have the proper buns. She told me that we could just use normal bread but no, that just won't due. Instead I returned to a recipe I've done a few times now as it always provides consistent results, can be made in a mixer, and is easy enough to sub in vegan butter and oat or soy-milk to avoid any dairy. 

FULL RECIPE CALCULATIONS HERE