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Eclipse Bread Challenge 2017

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I chose to focus on the moon, pretty much to the exclusion of the sun (no rules). And my inspiration - what do we all know the moon is made of? Green Cheese. Okay, so most anything resembling real green cheese may not seem so appetizing... then what would be? Pesto! Basil, garlic, pine nuts, parmesan - we have all those. Cool. A multigrain dough with a little whole wheat, about 25% whole rye, bread flour, salt, water, and a couple tablespoons of olive oil. Shaped as a crescent moon and filled with green cheesy pesto. Voila!

Canele crumb

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Baked 13 canele today (pastis flavored ... Yyyyyyummm) and noticed for whatever reason really nice crumb structure. A quick point for anyone delving into this pastry - crumb can sometimes come out more like a custard often times near the bottom - if you take a close look at the sliced sacrificial one here it's evident that the entire inside is slightly bubbly resembling bread and this is sort of the objective however some bakes I do don't always look like this and resemble sense custard near the bottom.

Aug 17-18: Daily Bread "Sandwich" Loaf

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Along with my play-time (the Eclipse experiments), I also needed a basic sandwich loaf for the week.  We've had hot, dry weather, bringing on the need for an early harvest, so not much time at home right now and a need for much portable food!

For our sandwiches this week, I wanted to use up the last of my older durum and kamut berries (since I had stocked up again), use up the rest of the rye levain that I had built, and keep it fairly high in whole grains. 

Aug 17-18: Play time! Eclipse Loaves

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  With Mini Oven’s Eclipse Bread challenge in mind, and the need to get my “mother” durum starter built back up, I started last week by pulling out 10g each of my 65% hydration rye and durum starters and starting with 3-stage levain builds, getting them both up to 80% hydration, and shooting for about 270g total of each levain.

Solar Eclipse 2017 Bread Challenge - Bread #2

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This bread is really a little bit unusual. I used sourdough colored with charcoal to simulate obscuration and Hokkaido squash to simulate the sun's corona.

The dough during the bake expanded much more than anticipated due to intensive fermentation in the bottom part which was warming up slowly due to the squash collar. I created an opening in the bottom of squash to get more even heat transfer and also to get another "solar eclipse" from the bottom side of the loaf.

 

I think I don't need to explain more as pictures are self explanatory.

First two movies:

Solar Eclipse Bread - A Crusty Sesame Bread for a Rare Event

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This month Mini Oven challenged us fellow Fresh Loafers to create a special bread to commemorate the upcoming total eclipse of the sun. Spurred by astronomic ambitions I began to ponder how to go about this.

Just a new bread? Where was the connection to the total eclipse?

A two-toned dough? Once I baked a marbled rye bread and found its taste rather underwhelming.

Squid ink as a black dye? Not my cup of tea!