Blog posts

It’s been an incredibly sad year, with our loved ones leaving us one after another. In those difficult moments, when everything felt bare, I found comfort in the quiet life of flowers. Wanting to share that comfort with others who were mourning, and to pay my last respects in a heartfelt way, I created a wreath for the memorial service.

This is an older way of baking bread, probably unique to Germany and other German speaking countries. The dough is placed and baked in a wooden frame (Holzrahmen). I used the dough of a basic miche but placed in a frame made of maple wood. It makes a wonderful moist bread.

Baked these this morning for dinner at a cousin's home.  They paired very nicely with the smoked whitefish pate and with the fish chowder.

Paul

I baked these today have on Christmas morning and to bring to friends on Boxing Day who have kindly invited for a Boxing Day dinner.  I made a couple of mistakes, I forgot to include the orange zest the dough and then forgot to include the pecans in the filling.  So I added the missing zest from the dough in the filling and used a lot of the pecans on top.  I made cardamom rolls in the past and didn’t think there was a good balance between the cardamom and cinnamon.  I used equal parts cardamom and cinnamon and I think it is better this time.

For today's exercise, I reconstituted 4  powered egg whites, and one half cup of heavy cream powder. Look for the finished products later. I always allow the reconstituted ingredients time to rest and fully incorporate. 

 Why use the dry?

1. I don't always have heavy cream on hand

2. No left over yokes to use.

The cake

Not bad for a first attempt m Many issues. Starting with a runny glaze, and a sloppy transfer to the dish.

Or, How to Score Inconsistently. But, hey, looks aren’t everything.  

Actually, I’m pretty happy with how this bake turned out.  Fermentation is on point and baking went well with plenty of oven spring and good coloring. Shaping was mostly good with only one “bent” loaf.  

20Dec

Made with fresh-milled Stardust wheat milled from Barton Spring Mills berries, as well as fresh-milled spelt.

The last bake had a higher percentage of bread flour than I’ve been using lately. This one, I went back to almost exclusively fresh-milled flour. The total percentage was 88.46%!

After 12 years of owning a bakery my partner and I sold Bread Obsession to a nice young couple and retired. 

Baked two of these, one as a gift and the other for turkey sandwiches post Christmas Dinner we are having tonight.  I have used most of my stash of frozen mashed purple sweet potatoes now.  I’ll have to pick up more in the spring.  We’ll be traveling for 45 days this winter so no need to get them yet.