Blog posts

Ingredients 

AP flour 100% - 540 g

Warm water 88% - 474 g

I.D.Y. .5 % - 2.7 g

Morton Kosher salt - 1.9% - 10 g

Pinch of sugar 

Process 

Preheat oven 475°F

I love moon cakes and these are the first ones that I made in celebration of the Mid Autumn Festival.  I don’t love the salted egg yolk that is traditionally in the middle of each moon cake to represent the moon, so I didn’t include these.  These are filled with homemade azuki bean paste which I make less sweet than commercially available azuki bean paste.  I just ate the cut one and they are truly delicious, just enough sweetness and a bit of texture from the paste as I didn’t blend it down.  The pastry is nice and short and crisp, yummy.

I made an onion, parmesan loaf today. It sounded good, smelt good, and tasted like old socks. I'll try toasting it, but don't hold out much hope. 

This is a surprisingly “healthy” cake as far as cakes go.  There isn’t a lot of flour, there is no dairy fat, the only saturated fat is from the eggs.  The carrot is blended with the olive oil and orange juice so it isn’t much like a traditional carrot cake.  It is obviously very moist and won’t dry out quickly at all with the olive oil in it.  It is actually really delicious and all gone now.

... Hours, that is. Today I made a Pullman loaf start to finish, in an hour and a half. And it's pretty decent, too.

I decided to try my hand at baking a bread in such a short time after I'd watched one too many episodes of The Great British Baking Show, known as the Bakeoff in the UK.  Over and over again the baker contestants had to create various kinds of bread in ridiculously short times, usually 2 hours or less. Up until now, I had always thought that a bread completed in short times would have little flavor and a limp crumb.

After Moe posted about a recent take on simple sourdough I got to looking through Susan's posts experimenting around with her simple sourdough approach. Her seeded doughs sure looked good. I thought I'd tweak my version of the simple formula to add in a few seeds. It turned out pretty tasty with some added nuttiness from the seeds.

In celebration of the opening of the Spring Street Pizza location in Tempe AZ. My humble rendition. 
Making of a clone.
The Iconic spicy Spring square. Spring Street Pizza.
It's not the journey, it's the destination.
First I want to deconstruct the spicy Spring into the individual components.
1. The pepperoni
This I have covered. Hormel cup& char.
2. The Fra Diavolo sauce.

Purple Straw is a soft white wheat that is not normally used for bread. It is called a Colonial Era honeyed wheat and hasn’t been around for over 50 years. I combined the fresh-milled Purple Straw with KAF high-gluten flour, and it worked perfectly. The Purple Straw is not easy to find right now. I bought mine at Barton Springs Mill a while ago. If you can find any, make sure to give it a try.

Batch 3 : And then I cut one..and then another and I couldn’t believe the crumb. These next ones are so ugly outside but wowser. Very pleased with flavor, incredibly tender and the YW really makes them flavorful , no sour in sight. Crisp crisp even after sitting at room temperature. Will be several weeks till all are eaten by just 2 of us. Will pass some along to son and his family as well. 

The tail of the tape
75% semolina 
25% sprouted whole wheat 
100% hydration 
1.3% IDY
2% Salt
1.25% Honey 
8% olive oil
8% Butter
Par-baked 12 minutes at 450° F
Build to follow.

Edited to add one more important parameter, the mix.

Hand mixed, two stretch and folds. Cold retard/bulk fermented 48 hrs. 2.5 hours warm to room temperature/ proof.