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So I needed a dessert for brunch so decided to bake a cake.  This recipe interested me because 25% of the flour is whole rye (the recipe calls for medium rye but I used whole rye) along with olive oil.  Both gave this cake more complexity than straight AP flour and a neutral oil would.  Also, in a nod towards making it lower fat I substituted Greek yogurt for the sour cream.  This is still acid enough to leaven the cake, although a bit more acid might have given it just a bit more of a boost.  This cake delicious and will keep for days given the olive oil in it.

We had friends over for brunch this past weekend and decided that a savory strata was going to be served.  So of course, I needed to make a challah for this, but didn’t have enough time for a sourdough challah due many other things happening.  So here is my recipe for a IDY fast all in less than a day delicious challah with some whole wheat.

Not exactly a bonus, more of a necessity as showing hydration percentages in each section lacked a summarised overview as did percentages in other areas such as

Another chunk of possible useless information, perhaps, but still an important one. The next phase was to figure out a way of dealing with percentages in a virtually calculator-free way by entering only the weight of ingredients & allowing the spreadsheet to calculate everything else.

Hi everyone, 

My bagels are turning out airy and fluffy, even though my dough hydration is 50 percent and I only rest for ten minutes after shaping. Could this be because I struggle degassing the dough enough? 

English muffins baked today. I haven't made EM's before so I used 1/2 recipe from King Arthur site to make 8 muffins. I hand mixed with a Danish whisk. Very slack dough much different from my regular sourdough bread dough and baked in a caste iron skillet on the stovetop. Looking forward to bacon and egg muffin tomorrow morning.

Well, that took a while!

As there will be way too much to take in, in one sitting considering what was included in my last blog post Bakers Percent Re-Imagined back in June last year and how long it took me to get to the finish line. I’ve decided to break it down into readable chunks so It should be easier to follow.

From the original “To-Do” list

This is what 14+ pounds of PSB dough looks like after it is turned into sandwich rolls and a loaf.  The loaf was egg-washed, the rolls were not.  The rolls are for a church picnic tomorrow. 

I used Mark Sinclair’s Back Home Bakery recipe to make a double batch.

Paul

We are visiting my partner’s sister this long weekend so of course I want to bring a loaf for them.  I was back working this week, I’m semi retired so I’ll do locums to cover for my old colleagues at the clinic when they go on vacations.  I get to pick and choose how much I work and I enjoy doing this kind of work since people are happy to be able to see a physician when something urgent comes up and theirs is away.  Anyhow, because of work, I had to compress my prep time, so instead of a pure sourdough leavening for this loaf I did a hybrid with 0.2% IDY added.

It was really strange that I had stopped adding nuts or seeds to my bread for quite a long time.  Now that I have started to add inclusions again, it reminds me how much I love them.  Running low on bread, this is what I decided to do for this all wholewheat loaf.  The lobes didn’t come out that evenly when baked, this does happen sometimes when they are shaped a bit too fat, it doesn’t affect the flavor but does make the mountains of Hokkaido look a bit wonky LOL.