Blog posts

I got my hands on some good stoneground whole red fife so wanted to incorporate it into my milk bread.  I haven’t used any red fife for a long while so it was due.  Because of the issues with gluten breakdown that seems to happen with red fife, I decided to use it all in the tangzhong, 20% since the gluten in the tangzhong won’t matter since it is cooked.

I had some pepitas and a handful of sunflower seeds lying around so decided to add them to this loaf.

The formula:

General Mills extra fancy Durum wheat 500g - 100%

Water                                                            520g - 104%

Instant yeast.                                               2.5g  -    .5%

Been a while since I posted any bakes, finally decided to do it again. Baked this mostly rye bread (about 70% whole rye and the rest bread flour) with seeds over the weekend.

Didn't measure everything very carefully, but vaguely:

200 g liquid-ish rye starter, perhaps 150% hydration or so

One of the posts that motivated me to join this group early this year was this one by troglodyte, Sourdough Bread for Bread Machines with Programmable Cycles

I used the same formula as for my 50-50 Emmer bread -

https://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/72946/50-emmer-sourdough

I’ve been wanting to try baking this style of bread for some time, but just couldn’t get my nerve up to trying it.  Despite its name, it seems that it is really an Asian style of bread.  I’m guessing that the Danish part of it is that it is somewhat like a danish as in the pastry.  Also, this isn’t something I could try during the heat of the summer and this week we are finally having some normal autumn weather.

La Parigina. Neapolitan stuffed pizza.

What is special about Parmigina? Pizza dough on the bottom puff pastry on top. 

Everything is on point. I just need to fill the canolii. I even got the kitchen back in order. Thank the Lord, for dishwashers!

I’ve been ordering berries from Barton Springs Mill for several years and have enjoyed every single product I’ve ordered from them. The flavor profiles they provide have been pretty accurate from my perspective, which is very helpful. Some nine or ten months ago, their Quanah wheat caught my eye. It is described as a hard red winter wheat and its flavor profile – buttery, creamy, malty – is right up my alley. A bag was duly ordered and, regrettably, it has been in storage ever since, waiting for me to bake my way through all the berries ahead of it in queue.

Recently I've posted about bakes using 50% spelt and 50% einkorn:

https://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/72911/50-einkorn-take-2
https://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/72889/50-spelt

Today's loaf used the third "ancient" grain - emmer.  I've never used it before.

  I made a new version of my pretzel rolls to bring to my Cousin’s for Rosh Hashanah dinner along with some of my standard ones.  Everyone seemed to really like the new ones so I guess I must have done something right :). 

This version had some fresh ground rye along with some dark cocoa powder along with the Guinness which really gave the final dough a nice malty flavor.  

I used pretzel salt, black sesame seeds and everything bagel topping for the toppings.  As usual these were made with a lye bath