Blog posts

We made gingerbread from scratch. Cutting the design by hand for 9 people was a PAIN IN THE BUTT! I cut two fancy Church style houses and it took forever, so I decided for the other 7 houses I would simplify things, but it still took forever.

Unfortunately, everyone had so much fun making the houses, I am sure we will be doing the same thing next year, so I want to take some notes to hopefully make the process less painful next year. My wife says I will forget how much work it was a year from now, she is right.

Christmas has been busy with activities so far. I am trying to stay disciplined and post my bakes, because I am finding the posts useful when I am trying to plan future bakes. I am going to post 3 blog posts today with the different bakes over Christmas I want to keep notes on.

Unfortunately or fortunately depending on who you ask, I am short on time this morning, so I will try to keep the posts brief.

Recipe:

I do this sweet bread every year but it is just this winter that I tried the sourdough version. As always, once I try sourdough, I do not come back to yeast. It will be the case for this bread as well. It is true that it takes time to make it but it worth every minute of it. 

A very good tasting chew, with butter, toasted or untoasted.  Hard to pin down the dominant flavor, but it has chocolately, coffee, and rye tones.  Finally, a sweetness imparted by 3% Mesquite bean pod flour.  Smells iffy while fermenting, but sweet once baked.

Well I had a baking extravaganza this weekend - pizza, croissants, baguettes and today canele.  I took a snap (with my flour encrusted phone - sorry for the lack of phoographic quality).  This bake had very few uncooked tops which if anyone has tried canele knows that cooking tops is a challenge since they like to rise or 'muffin top'.  I have no idea why with repetition, certain things just improve.  but to the bigger point - all y'all, sometimes its just a good thing to resign yourself to all the science and tips and tricks and just bake over and over - and accept the

Good day

KAF are not bromated, enriched or bleached from what I understand.  Is the same true of Wheat Montana flours?

Thank you

Father Raphael

I could not let stand the poor results of this morning bake. Let's hope the Goddess Fortuna Redux, takes mercy and leads this bake safely home! 

P.S.This is what a 25% increase looks like. I'll be back once the buns are safely on the cooling rack. Smile...

The dough has been mixed using my Traditional baguette, bosch specific method. We are now in bulk ferment. I find it very helpful to have my tiny work station ready and organized. 

 since we know that 1,680 grams of dough equal approximately 1.68 liters, we can calculate a 25% increase to be approximately 2.1 liters. The progress will be checked in 60 min. from the start of bulk. 

This post illustrates starter maintenance and an end-to-end bake of a whole wheat Desem loaf using home milled hard white spring wheat berries (Prairie Gold) using JMonkey's Desem post as a blueprint. It is relevant to some of the starter yeast-vs-LAB ratio discussions on TFL this past week.   It is fun to find such useful posts and discussions from the TFL "archives" back in 2009.  He summarizes the style succinctly, and helps dispel a lot of mystique around this style of bread: