Blog posts

This is my take on what is apparently a traditional Venezuelan Christmas bread that turns out to be super yummy.  As I said before, my various takes on Hokkaido SD milk bread prove to be so flexible.  I used my 35% WW version for this bake.  The dough gets rolled out and then ham, sliced green olives stuffed with pimentos and finally raisins and applied.  It is all rolled up into a cylinder and then eventually baked.  Did I say it is yummy, salty and a bit sweet from the raisins.

I received a sack of graham flour for Christmas.  It is from Burkett's mill.  If you read up on graham flour you usually read that is whole wheat ground more coarsely than the usual WW.  If you find the right site, it will tell you that the endosperm is ground finely and the bran and germ are ground coarsely, I think the flour I have must be the latter.  It's color is lighter than the water wheel-stone ground flour I have, with larger flecks and dark bits.

Very successful and as simple as it gets.

Preferment: 2 cups wholegrain rye flour,  2 heaping tablespoons of rye starter from the fridge,  enough water to make a soft dough.  Place in lukewarm spot for a couple of hours, then move to a cooler place fir the rest if the fermentation (total of 18-24 hours) 

I made three panettoni for my family Christmas, and I'm very happy with the result. There was some discrepancy between final proofing temperatures due to proximity to the oven light, so one of them was a little shorter than it could have been, but the flavor and texture was great on all of them.

I wanted to make a special bread for Christmas and the Lithuanian Christmas Bread from Stanley Ginsberg’s The Rye Baker fit the bill. The bread is 100% rye and has a whopping 45% fruit added (prunes, apricots, and raisins). The recipe specifies 76% white rye and 24% medium rye. I don’t have any white rye flour so I made it with all medium rye (King Arthur) and increased the hydration from 70% to 75% to compensate.

Today's exercise.

Brooklyn style, Sicilian stuffed pizza. Sausage roll/chicken roll. 

2.0 The second time, much better than the first time. 

I've done 25 panettone bakes this year, according to my records! How the time, and panettone, flies. Looking back on the year, I've studied, taken classes, tried numerous techniques affecting each stage of product. There have been successes and a few (thankfully) failures, bright ideas and "Oops" moments. 

My first bake since returning home for us, although I made two, one is for a present.  We love seeds and nuts in bread so wanted to have a nutty bread.  I toasted the walnuts and also used toasted walnut oil in lieu of butter to maximize the nutty flavour.  I also last minute decided to top the loaves with black sesame seeds because why not!  I usually weigh the dough when I divide, this time I did not and obviously didn’t do a good job by eye LOL.

We bought a lot of Turkish black olives last week and I thought finally it's time to bake olive bread.