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A Sunday Carboholic Brunch

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I love fresh bagels and croissants, but being a household of one, these present a challenge: I can't (and more important, shouldn't) sit down and eat my way through a half dozen at a time.  The other side of the challenge is the impracticality of making up either dough for just a couple bagels or croissants.

Rogers basic rye bread

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Hello all!!

Has anybody ever tried to make the recipe at the back of the package of Rogers Rye flour??

Well, I am making it right now, it's on its first rise. As always there is something wrong with my dough, it was very very super wet, the recipe calls for 2 1/2 to 3 1/2 cups of white flour in addition to the 3 cups of rye flour. Although the recipe does not call for sifting the flour prior to measuring, I did it, (for the first time, I took the time to sift the flours). By the way I used 3 1/2.

Today's breads - San Francisco Sourdough & San Joaquin Sourdough

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Nothing new in today's baking, but these are two of my favorites.

The San Francisco Sourdough is from Suas' "Advanced Bread and Pastry." I fed my stock starter to make a firm levain with KAF Bread Flour and BRM Dark Rye. The final dough was mixed with KAF AP. The San Joaquin Sourdough was made as previously described (many times). This batch was made with a 73% hydration dough.

I feel my bâtard shaping is coming along. I'm using the technique described in Hamelman's "Bread."

10 quart Hobart accessories

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I am looking for a dough hook and whisk for a 10 quart Hobart.  Does anyone know where I could find those parts?  Hobart no longer makes that size machine or parts.  I am wondering if the 12 quart attachment (dough hook) would fit.  If it can fit on the machine I can have it cut to fit.  I can live without the whisk as I need the machine to knead bread which I now do by hand.  I have a 6 quart Kitchen Aid which is suitable for small batches of dough.

Trip across the channel

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I intended to start a blog and leave a post every week with updates of a new loaf or new idea as a way to help me keep on experimenting and learning. So far, alas I have fallen at the first hurdle, after an impromptu trip to Paris I failed to update my blog the first week and haven't done so since.

the monster

Hey, hey.  So, it's midnight great time to fire up the mixer right?  Trying this Scottish sponge bread from Laurel's Bread Book.  Have made it a bunch in the KA. So will try it in the big mixer. Capacity prob. The 15 cups of flour total will hardly make the mixer work. Oh well, gotta start somewhere. I like to learn the hard way.  Well, may not like to learn that way so much as it sticks with me.

White Leaven Bread - Dan Lepard - My first attempt

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With the starter that I made a week ago, I finally got to try a recipe using Dan Lepard - The Handmade Loaf.  White Leaven Bread Pg 28.

I halved the ingredient as I was not sure how it'll turn out.  With the freshly made starter,  I just did 1 refrehment.  Made a little too much,  and the rest went to making muffins and pancakes.

Ayway,  it was quite an experience.  I wanted a good well developed gluten,  and I wanted to nice holes in the crumbs.  I decided to do more rest,  stretch and fold and add my salt last.  

Growing Gluten Free Sourdough Starter in the Refrigerator for a Milder Sour

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Growing starter in the refrigerator is said to minimize the sour taste of sourdough. It also enables us to reduce the feedings from 3 times a day to twice. I find my starters ferment very quickly these days making me wonder if I have enormous invisible colonies of yeast and bacteria in my kitchen. I also ferment water kefir, milk kefir, and kombucha so I assume there is quite a bit of activity going on.

 

Hamelman's Olive Bread

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I changed the formula to use my 100% sourdough, the rest is as the same as the formula in the book. It's a straightforward bread, autolyse, knead a bit, add olives(I may just have used a tiny bit more than what the book suggested), gently incorporate, bulk rise for 4 hours (two folds), shape, cold retarding for 12 hours, pull out of the fridge and continue to proof for 100min, bake at 460F for 45min.