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For the last few weeks, Winter seemed to be finally giving up it’s hold on the Northern California foothills of the Sierra Nevada, so we planned a picnic to kick off the next 4 months of picnics. Of course it rained all day and kept to mid-forties temperatures, so we migrated indoors, but the conversation, salads, wine and blackberry pie were still enjoyed by all.

26Apr

I wanted to add the nutty flavor of pecans without using chopped or whole nuts in the bread, so I decided to pulse some pecans with my mini-food processor into a meal. It really added some wonderful nutty flavor to this bake.

As a person with food sensitivity I am very considerate to those like me. But I am aware that everyone can differ in which foods he/she can tolerate. In that respect there is not one GF bread working for all. 

Some people cannot tolerate oats, there is a group of people sensitive to rice. Millet, for most being a very beneficial food, can be not very useful for those with thyroid problems. Some cannot tolerate certain starches. The main binding agents: psyllium and xantan gum both can cause reactions. 

I am pretty happy with this formulation. Time to lock in the par-bake timing. Then I will move on to scaling to a larger sized pie. 

Lumpy ( I named the dough) is almost ready for the oven. 

Today's bake:  Cumin Rye -  Chleb Sandomierski (Poland)

Source:  The Rye Baker by Stanley Ginsberg

Notes: Increase hydration from 79.84% to 83.4%
Substitutions: Fresh milled rye @65% extraction for white rye flour.

Discussion: They say you learn more from your failures than from your successes... 

This is my take on the American classic ham and cheese croissants. I used cheddar and dendeng (Indonesian style beef jerky) as filling. For the colored dough, I used a mixture of paprika, cayenne, and onion powder. As for the glaze, I pan fried shallot, garlic, keffir lime leaves, and Indonesian bay leaves, then to the pan I added light palm sugar (there is darker variety that actually taste better because of added caramel, but the croissants need sweeter light palm sugar to counteract the slight bitterness of the outer red dough since it burns easier), water, pepper, salt, and fish sauce.

I’ve been working as a bread baker in the USA and our training (at my bakery at least) is a little lax. Im self taught for the most part but this is my attempt at a sourdough boule. How did I do? I wasn’t able to cut it and take a pic unfortunately. I’m hoping to go to Europe eventually to work with more traditional breads 

So happy by how this batch turned out! I've made above 20 batches of hand-laminated pain Suisse up to this point, and this is my absolute best so far!

This batch was the tidiest pain Suisse dough I've ever worked with. Usually laminating pain Suisse means greasy working table (the stripes leave butter 'fingerprints' on the table). It wasn't as messy.

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