Blog posts

I'm very happy to have worked out this recipe, not only because I am adding a new variety to the many existing recipes using sourdough starter discard, but it has also brought back a lot of fond memories from my childhood.

Egg puffs were one of my favorite after-school snacks that I picked up from a street hawker outside my elementary school.  Those freshly made egg puffs had soothed and warmed my rumbling stomach at winter dusk-I was in the PM section of my elementary school.

I have relocated my Bread Baker's Toolbox (Volume Conversion Formula Tool , Custom Batch Formula Tool) to one of my hosting servers at BreadMagic.com. Now I can finally shut down my server at the house. I hope you can get some use out of these tools and I will be making more of them soon. If you have any suggestions for formula or conversion tools that would make your life easier, just let me know.

    I couldn't let Sylvia and Pamela have all the red stained shirts! I did use Sylvia's meatball recipe, but instead of rolling the out by hand used and ice cream scoop to put the meatball in the bread crumbs. NEXT time I will only use a cookie dough scoop. They were way too big! I was scooping, rolling and putting them straight in the oil when I stopped to count. Sylvia had 18 or so and here is 10,11, 12. Uh oh. Too late. Good thing I have a big mouth. They were great ya'll. Thanks for the inspiration. My bread crumbs vanished somehow, but they were great.

Here's one of my favourite rye loaves:

The rolls I made with the Sourdough Italian Bread  dough were so good, I made a bigger batch today. I thought about making them larger than last time, but my wife said she wanted hers smaller. So, I made half of them 4 oz and half 3 oz. I guess you could call them "His and Hers Sourdough Italian Rolls."

When I saw Sylvia's sandwiches I immediately knew what we were having for Father's Day! I made BBA's Italian Bread. Thanks to information gleaned from David's posts I knew to increase the mixing time. I think it took about 10 minutes on medium speed in my KA to pass the window pane test.

I used a regular biga (is there really any such animal?) that I made the day before and held overnight in the refrigerator. I made one loaf and 4 hoagie-style rolls (each roll weighed about 5 ounces).

I TOLD myself to be ready for the change in weather, but it tripped me up once again.  I wasn't taking the warmer weather into account when refreshing my starter.  So lately it was way on the downhill side before I was using it.  Big mistake, as my loaves have been somewhat flatter and somewhat more dense, though certainly edible.  But I'm back on track now, as evidenced below.  Thought I'd better document this here so others can learn from my errors.

This recipe is from page 130 of Eric Kayser's [b]Beyond The Bread Basket[/b].  It is part of a dessert called [b]Strawberries in Wine with Pink Caramelized Almond Bread[/b].  As winter is now in full swing down under, strawberries are everywhere in fruit & vege stores and supermarkets; I thought it would make a relatively healthy dessert for after dinner.  

[u]Formula for Pink Caramelized Almond Bread[/u] 

250g bread flour

a pinch of salt