Blog posts

29Mar

I love buying the Harvest Grain mix from Trader Joe’s. It makes an excellent side dish and is flavorful and healthy. It contains Israeli couscous, orzo, baby garbanzo beans, and red quinoa, which I cook in chicken stock and little oil. I have wanted to incorporate the cooked grains in bread for a while, so here you go!

I don't make a wide variety of breads, so don't have much to blog about. Thought if someone was looking online for the difference in finished bread colour between black and champagne gold pans, he might stumble across this. That's the grammatical "he", btw. Same dough, same bake, at 350° for 30min. No comparison of shiny, sliver pans because I've given up on them. Waaay too light.

Will's recent bun experiments had me thinkiing of subs. The fillings stick out, or fall out, of my homemade sub sandwiches, or the top sits a mile from the bottom. They are never neat & tidy like Subway's. Maybe how the bun is cut is no secret, but I never paid any attention. I examined what was left of my Subway sandwich tonight and saw a cut of about 1/2" or so at the joined portion of top & bottom. That is, the slice went through the bun and then downward when it reached the far edge. Naturally, I asked AI how to cut a sub bun and was told the "hinge cut".

I woke up at 3:00 this morning, and after half an hour trying to go back to sleep, I gave up. So I made pineapple turnovers.

For the photo montage process, and the formula 🔗 follow the 🔗 below 👇 👇 👇 👇 👇 👇 👇 👇 👇 👇 👇 👇 👇 👇 👇 👇 👇 👇 👇 👇 👇 👇 👇 

https://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/76111/todays-exercise-i-will-attempt-final-challenge-included-ka-big-month-bread 

I couldn't be happier with the final product. Moist, not overly sweet, rich, and fudgey. 

I joined TFL in 2007, where I learned to make my own sourdough starter, and made my very first loaves. The community here was amazing then (and still is!). I still pop in here quite a lot to research flavors and techniques, new ideas. I stopped and started sourdough multiple times over the years, but picked it back up in the summer of 2023 and have been all in ever since. I started selling my first bread in February of 2024. I’ve learned so much along the way, and continue stretching and learning as I go, week by week.

Me thinks they turned out pretty nice ;) 

From King Arthur's big month of baking series.

These loaves turned out surprisingly sweet and earthy. I used to make ground walnut loaves very frequently years ago - with some cocoa included as well - but the teff and rye here definitely contribute some complexity that I've never had with previous loaves.

Dry ingredients: 30% medium rye and 13% teff pre-fermented, 13% ground walnuts, 44% bread flour. Total hydration: 66%, be careful with over-hydrating because the ground walnuts don't really soak up much water.

22Mar

One of my favorite ways of making healthy potatoes is to partially boil them in salted water and then toss them in olive oil with some spices. Then, I place them on my pellet smoker until they are nice and crisp with a slightly smokey flavor. They are good enough to eat by themselves. I decided to prepare some purple sweet potatoes in this fashion and had enough left over to use in this bread.