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I saw a recipe for Bath Buns--a traditional sweet, glazed bun from Bath, England--in Richard Bertinet's "Crust." The buns looked rather like the baked char siu bao of dim sum, so I thought I'd tart up the traditional dim sum dish with a higher-end bun. 

The result was eerily reminiscent of the dim sum dish--I'm now thinking that the dim sum dish is likely a descendant of the Bath Bun (by way of the British in Hong Kong). Any food historians out there? According to Google, I'm the first to advance this poorly supported theory. Anyhow, onto the baking...

Retaurants have house wines - the reasonably decent go-to when you can't make up your mind - so why can't I have a "house bread" as a fall-back standard when I can't figure out what else to make?

I'm trying (so far unsuccessfully) to get onto the sourdough/levain train, but my strength so far seems to be straight dough formulas.  Nonetheless, I wanted a bit of pre-ferment action, so I've adopted a dual-use strategy with one of my previous fads.

I got to playing with pepper jelly. 

Ingredients:  gelatin, sugar, one orange habanero, assorted sweet garden peppers, one garlic clove, water, and one glass 250ml.   Method: slice everything colorful and thin and mix with sugar, gelatin and a little water to let all the vegetables shrink and curl up for about 6-10 hours.  Amazing how they do that!  Bring to a light boil until passing the gel test on a cold plate.  (about 10-15 minutes)  Pour into hot sterilized jar and cap, let cool. 

As days grow shorter and colder, I tend to opt for more wholesome breads in my baking. This week, I've enjoyed a wonderful rye loaf, studded with seeds and heavy on flavour. The dough for this bread is wet, and the baked loaf keeps well and improves as days go by. Here's a copy of my formula. Please note that proofing time will vary according to your starter activity and your final dough temperature.

Today was my best baking day yet, and not just because it was a gorgeous day on the Mendocino Coast. It was a sweet and sourdough day.  Last night the San Joaquin Sourdough dough was mixed, stretched, folded, grown to 150% size, and refrigerated.

I have usually followed the instructions to oil the bowl lightly very poorly. Having had some dough stick to the container a long time ago I would pour oil into the bowl and spread it around with a paper towel. A number of the breads I tried would flatten out or at least no trise the way it seemed they should. So when I tried to make the bread in question I first of all made the mistake of grabbing the High Gluten container instead of the high extraction flour.

I've tried Bertinet's beer poolish bread in the past (also seen here), so I thought I'd try a bit of a variation on the theme - adding just a bit more non-white flour.

Here's the formula I ended up developing:

Hey all,

Just wanted to share with you this bake from 9/23/10.  It is a Tourte Auvergnate inspired by the recipe in Le pain, l'envers du décor by Frédéric Lalos.  His version is basically 80% rye, and the rest in white flour, which is made into a stiff levain.  I decided to make mine with 75% rye flour, and 25% AP flour.  I made the AP flour into a stiff levain, and then with some of the rye flour, I made a rye sour.  Here's the formula, process, and pictures.  Enjoy!

Overall Formula

750g Whole Rye Flour

250g AP