Blog posts

Blogs are my favourite part of The Fresh Loaf. I'm delighted to participate in a community of knowledgeable bakers who inspire me. However, writing blogs is challenging because I need to think about "usability" from the readers' perspective. "Usability" means how easily an intended audience can process information to achieve their desired purpose. That purpose might be entertainment, education, or completing a procedure such as a recipe. We run into usability issues all the time when we're confused, lost, or frustrated by writing (or interfaces, or diagrams, etc.).

More baking with the red wheat this time i milled the wheat with my kenwood and the intention was to make it 50% with millers single origin white flour which is rated at 12% protein. i had already soaked and sprouted some of the red wheat a couple of days earlier to the Chit stage and it was my intention to add this to the mix too that was a 20% addition. i put the sprouts through the liquidiser, i did need to add a bit of water to ensure the sprouts kept falling to the blades as initially they were getting hung up on the sides of the container.

Rus Brot's Ukrainian Palyanitsa recipe

When I couldn't use my oven because it was baking German bread all day, I used the air fryer to make crusty bread for the first time. It turned out great and was fun too! 

I buy organic whole hard red winter wheat, temper it with 2% water for 2 days, and stone grind with 3 passes through my electric mill. I add 2% fresh milled rye flour and 2% fresh milled fava bean flour. (The rye and fava flours do make a difference.)

I use a 6-liter, 4" deep plastic tub with a good lid as my dough trough.

In one end, I put 2.2% (baker's percentage) of salt in one end.

In the middle, I put my flour.

Should have made this one sooner. Benny has hit on something really lovely here with 100% WW Hokkaido milk breads, and the recipe is simply superb.

This bake was done by following his 2.0 version of the recipe as his later versions seemed to show that a small amount vital wheat gluten was a good thing.

I’ve never made hot cross buns before and have only had supermarket ones that I never liked. Having a new appreciation for candied peel I decided that I would try my hand at developing a formula for a sourdough 100% whole wheat version.

This year with CLAS! Will bring the treats to work tomorrow.

Here is the dough formula: https://fgbc.dk/2blk

For the filling I found milled and steamed poppy seeds here - Dampfmohn (pricey, but saves a trip to Germany to buy ready made filling, or saves lots of hard manual work with a pestle and mortar). So just boiled those with milk, honey, lemon zest and raisins the day before.

I made brioche buns and smaller loaves of sourdough recently. Smaller bakes are fun!

Instead of my usual braided loaves, the brioche with sourdough discard and Tangzhong were made into little buns (or pastries). These were not 2:1 or 3:2 (flour:butter) brioche; 50-70% butter versions. I used just 30% eggs, 30% butter which came out soft and buttery, thanks to the use of Tangzhong and Kamut. The second batch used 25% of each.

Bennie started it with his lemon love! This is a mixed up  crust with YW SD whole wheat and a bit of T65 and the rest AP. Toppings are mozzarella and Parmesan and black olive tapenade with pepperoni and homemade sauce. 

Tomorrow is Pie Day 3.14, what do you have prepared to celebrate? Instead of a double crusted pie I decided to bake a tart today (Pie day minus 1 = 3.13 ). The lemons looked really good yesterday at the market so decided upon a lemon tart which uses a pate sucrée pasty.

I like an extra lemony and tart curd so my curd has a bit more lemon zest and a bit less sugar than I usually see in the lemon fillings in recipes.

For the pastry - pate sucrée