Blog posts

Today's bake: Pane di Altamura

Source: The Italian Baker - Carol Field

Note: Increased hydration from 86.67% to 91.67% due to  fresh milled flour factor of 5%

Discussion: This bread has really expansive oven spring and blooming.  The crust is nice and crisp and the crumb a soft cake like quality.  The crumb tastes of dairy/cheesy and nutty flavors and the crust had notes of vanilla bean.

I have a new jar of yuzu tea.  So yuzu tea (or citron tea since it is Korean) is a marmalade like jelly made from yuzu that when mixed with boiling water makes a lovely drink.  I decided I wanted to make some sweet rolls and I wanted to have yuzu flavour to it so I would use the yuzu tea as the filling and I have a bottle of yuzu extract that I would use as the liquid for the drizzle/icing. Despite the name of these rolls, they aren’t very sweet.  Other than the sugar used for the stiff sweet levain, there isn’t any sugar added to the dough.

Help guys…

I am failing to to finish baking, my par-baked baguettes. I can’t seem to get the crumb  on the inside to be dry. It’s usually wet and squishy. It’s like it’s not yet been cooked enough but when I par-bake the baguettes, I get the internal temperature to be around 98 to 99°C, so it is already cooked. I don’t understand what I’m doing wrong. Please anyone out there help me. 
I cannot seem to understand where I’m going wrong.

Now onto a not-too-difficult stage.

For the dinner party last night we had one guest who won’t eat cooked vegetables!  What to prepare that he will eat?  Pulled pork sandwiches as the main, along with coleslaw.  For appetizers I served pork, shiitake mushroom and Napa gyoza that I made a while ago and froze.  These are great to have frozen so you can save prep when having a dinner party.  The pulled pork was made using my Instant Pot.

We had guests over last night for dinner so wanted to make a pie for dessert.  As you might know I love sour cherries and love rhubarb so decided to make a pie with both but this time with a streusel topping.  For pate brisée recipe look at this previous post.

Admittedly, I am aware and I have spoken emphatically about the importance of calibrating pH meters. My training in the wine lab has instilled the habit of calibration each and every time prior to use, in that environment.

Why then have I been so lax with my bread and dough meter! Perhaps it is the domestic setting that gives rise to such a laid back approach. Then again, even in the work place I have been deemed as a 'laid back' kind of guy!

A variable section for each recipe, nothing too intricate needed as mainly guidelines.

• Adding details, real times, rating, extra notes, methods, links,

No real need for the full recipe method, just the highlights are enough to be getting started and nudges as the day progresses. Extra baking notes for the actual bake sitting with timings, for those final stages.