Blog posts

Super Starter

Profile picture for user Edo Bread

My starters are always very strong.  I was a little worried though as I took a fairly long tip to India, how my main source would do. Apparently, it really wanted to get out and be made it to bread. I found it totally healthy, but half had escaped into the refrigerator!. Made a bunch of nice loaves after a feeding.

A nice canele surprise

Profile picture for user kendalm
Its been a while since I baked these delicious morsels and spent a good deal of watching niko triantafillou's super quick video (found here https://www.saveur.com/how-to-make-canele). As a self proclaimed obsessive he already holds tons of credit and then watch his video (kiss fingers mmmma!) Just beautiful. So this time i decided its time to go all the way - vanilla beans instead of extract and gee instead of butter in the beeswax mix. Oh and 36 hours rest instead of 12.

Squash and seed bread

Profile picture for user cfraenkel

A friend brought me a butternut squash that weighed in at about 3Kilos.  It is a big squash!  So naturally I decided to try putting squash in bread.  

Here is what I did,

AP flour 225g
Red Fife 70g
Squash puree (baked  the squash and then pureed it) 100g.
Starter (100%) 115g
Water 150g
Salt 5g
Maple syrup 18g
Pumpkin seeds - toasted 75g.

1.  Mix all but seeds by hand Let sit for 30 mins. add in seeds and do Stretch and folds to incorporate.

In search of

Profile picture for user kendalm

The picture perfect loaf. After a couple of disappointments ie, full on overproof last week and slightly entering the overproof zone yesterday, I figure it's time to cpncentrate again. This time shavint 5 minutes off the final and remembering my own tips on scoring. Its so easy to forget. Pretty nice loaves today !

A post FTR

Profile picture for user kendalm
Posting just for the record. Went ever so slightly into the over proof zone again. Not quite the pop I like but still pretty decent stuff. This formula calls for 0.8% fresh yeast which for 600g flour mean 4-5g of yeast. This is a real pain to measure and thinking back of both the noticable high rise in the morning and thinking about measuring I may have added 7-8g which is easy to do if your scale doesnt do 10ths of a gram. I often notice that I can weigh the same small amount twice and have two readings differing by up to 2g.

Laminates starting to comply

Profile picture for user kendalm
Objective today was to improve on some former efforts to achieve a more open crumb with croissants etc. Unfortunately as i began dough prep last night I was almost out of the flour I have been using and, have discovered works nicely for the lamination process (francine bio t55). This makes a really great dough that glutenizes beaitifully just not a great bread flour as its missing some af the additives (malts etc) - this is straight flour at about 9.4% protein. So only having about 250g left for a 500g batch I, added the other 250 as gold medal AP.

Tried and True Sourdough

Profile picture for user pattyswildbread

Patty’s Wild Bread - Classic Sourdough
This is my “tried and true” recipe - makes 2 loaves

Ingredients

490 g  – Water
244 g  – Starter at 100% - AP starter
17 g  – Sea Salt   
17 g – honey (optional)
60 g – Whole Wheat flour
411 g – All Purpose flour
310 g – Bread flour    (700 g Bread flour and 71 g of Whole Wheat or Rye if desired)

Mix

My first fresh loaf in many months!

Profile picture for user Skibum

Since I moved to my new home 31/2 months ago, I have eaten little bread. Now that the cold weather is setting in, I have had cravings for grilled cheese sandwiches. I actually bought a store loaf of sliced white bread and it made a pretty good grilled cheese. I figured I could do better.

Croissants - one step forward

Profile picture for user kendalm
Three mini croissants made with some extra dough from the weekend that I had sitting frozen in the freezer. Some positive signs of open crumb ! Too bad the picture is a bit blurry. Originally I was getting ready to toss the dough as i got off to a false start over the weekend and mixed some ADY with chilled water finding only after mixing that the yeast had not dissolved (dough ball spotted with freckles of undissolved yeast). Instead I started another batch and let the first warm to RT and then hand kneaded until the freckles disappeared, split into halves and froze the tosser.

Not sure if proofing or slashing was the issue.....

Toast

....but at least the photo seems the right way up!

The clocks have gone back, the weather is definitely cooler, and I’m not sure if I should adjust my schedule. I usually start between 1 and 2pm with a short autolyse, develop dough with slap and fold and then do 2 or 3 lots of stretch and folds depending on how the dough feels. I’ve been shaping about 6pm before putting bannetons in the fridge at some point before bed and baking straight from there in the morning