Blog posts

I continue to tweak my bakes even if the formula largely stays the same.  In the case of my SD baguettes, I have gradually (very slowly since I don’t bake baguettes all that often) been working on the idea that with greater gluten development I can allow more fermentation.  When we did the baguette community bake ages ago we came to the conclusion that less gluten development and less overall fermentation gave us a great baguette with open crumb and good ears/grigne.

I had just enough potato flakes to use at 12% so decided to use it up for this bake.  Once again, I didn’t make a tangzhong by cooking the potato flakes with milk, but in theory, you do not need to do that when using these dehydrated flakes.  Although the potatoes are dehydrated, the starches in them are already gelatinized so once they hydrate should give you the benefits of a tangzhong without the extra step.  I did find this to be the case as this bread is very soft and keeps from getting stale quite a while.

Caramel apple panettone made with sweet lievito madre.

I have been developing my sweet LM for a while now, initially to help with making sourdough shokupan, but now also to use with SD brioche and panettone. I am still adding a small amount of regular LM "just in case", but as you can see, the sweet LM rises very well. The flavor of the panettone is outstanding.

Hi!

 Can I use 14% protein all purpose flour for my ciabatta?

I have 80% hydration and use an active sourdough starter. 
‘Tnks!

Some more Lupin and Linseed with a dash of home milled pre fermented red wheat Lupin content was 20% made up with soaked splits and some Lupin Flour Linseed was 10%, Red Wheat was from refrigerated s/d excess. This dough was bigger than the last one and it wasn't till i weighed up the soaked lupin splits that i realised i was short on for the Lupin component so i decided id add Lupin Flour and also add more water for that too. I was very pleased worked like clockwork 2 hour bulk fermentation using Fresh compressed yeast @ 2% loaves weighed off at 515g each and baked in round pans

For those of you who are interested in Italian baking, particularly the Italian brioches, these books from Italian Gourmet are worth noting:

Un Panettone Mondiale (with English text): "The stars and all the recipes of the first international national competition on the beloved Italian delicacy".

I thought I’d try something a bit different both in the dough as well as the shaping for these buns.  We are going to have fish burgers tonight so wanted buns for them.  The braiding was somewhat successful but could be better since this was my first time trying this.  A slightly lower hydration would have helped this immensely, but ensuring a bit more flour on the dough when making the knots.  The excess hydration was due to the egg being 11 g too heavy.  Next time I’d beat the egg and then add the correct amount.

Spring is here... soon it will be too warm to use the large indoor oven. It's the season for min-ovens (MO) and bread machines (BM) to be used more frequently, often set up out on the porch.

Over the last year or so I've tested dozens of BM's, looking for the ones that do the best job at mixing/kneading, fermenting/proofing, and baking. This thread is about the baking part.

I haven’t done this style of bread in sometime, I found a package of freeze dried strawberries in the back of a cupboard so it inspired me to use it.  Matcha and strawberries are great together.  Although I have made this style of bread before, I’d never done with with my mochi formula which uses sweet rice flour as the tangzhong.

I last made these around the holidays and wanted to make them again based on comments I received.  Essentially there wasn’t quite enough ginger in them, the cinnamon was dominant the first time.  I fix that I’ve increase the ginger by 50% and based on comments from people who ate them, I think I’ve got that right now.