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Being back in Toronto I have access to ingredients that I couldn’t find in Fort Lauderdale Florida.  Yesterday I went to Chinatown and picked up some purple sweet potatoes and some BBQ Pork.  I’ve been wanting to try making fully sourdough (not hybrid with IDY) Baozi for a while, the last attempt at it didn’t go well.  Given the expense of buying BBQ Pork these needed to be successful and they were.  

A nutritious and delicious bread based on the writings of Christian Rémésy. In the same vein as respectus panis but Rémésy deserves a bread named after him given his outsized influence in the research area of bread nutrition. This bread is typically very dense (which is healthier because lower glycemic load.

I was disappointed in my last set of baguettes so had to bake another set.  With this set, I was using this new AP flour again and based on the last set decided to go with 76% hydration and do hand mixing so I could better assess how the dough felt.  I also didn’t do any cold retard because the dough in the last set really resisted stretching as it was still a bit cold during shaping.

Sourdough with 10% Lupin Flour – test bake 1.

Date baked: 23rd April 2023.

First, a thank you to Debra Wink and Derek Hughes for their valuable advice.

This is a sourdough with 10% lupin flour. Lupin flour does not have any gluten, so experimentation is advised starting at a low per cent. The flour has a yellow colour and has high nutritional value.

I still have some rhubarb from a friend’s farm from last year frozen in my freezer.  We are hosting a dinner party for neighbours tonight so wanted to bake a pie with a pate brisée pastry crust using the rhubarb.  I couldn’t source any sour cherries so decided to try a spiced peach rhubarb filling for the first time.  I recently purchased a Fat Daddio’s pie dish.  I have always used glass pie dishes because I could see the crust and tell if it was fully baked.

I am definitely out of practice shaping baguettes.  Looking at my index I see it has been almost exactly 6 months, much too long.  Based on the three baguettes I baked you can see the improvement with the shaping from the first to the third.  Another variable is that I couldn’t find my preferred flour that I have been using for baguettes so had to use a flour I haven’t used for baguettes before.

 Very slightly gummy even though I baked it to 107F. The crust hasn't flown and it is absolutely delicious. Soakers were black sesame, flax, cracked rye and added toasted sunflower seeds.

Patsy

I recently bought some French Foricher T65 flour whilst shopping for some other flours.

I hadn't got a particular recipe in mind when I bought it, but then it became obvious that the first thing to try was an authentic "pain au levain".

I became rather interested in the original method for making pain au levain which dates from 1778 (or earlier) as detailed in Parmentier's "Le parfait boulanger, ou Traité complet sur la fabrication et le commerce du pain (Éd.1778)". The method is known as "travail sur trois levains", or work on three levains.

From Maurizio Leo's The Perfect Loaf. Baked this morning - will slice tomorrow to see if I've avoided the dreaded flying crust

We’re back home and as usual out of bread.  I found some Einkorn flour so decided to use it in this loaf.  No bread flour or VWG will be used for this loaf.  As I have recently started to use a stiffer tangzhong and have increased the percentage up to 20% I haven found that I don’t need to use any VWG at all and can still get a great rise for this style of bread.  So this loaf is 100% whole grain, 20% of that whole einkorn.  I also like the flavour that einkorn gives to bread, but it is definitely hard to come by around here.