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I love baking challah breads so whenever we host a brunch recently it has given me an excuse to bake another challah in order to make a strata.  Strata for those unfamiliar with it is essentially a way of making French toast for the masses and somewhat like a bread pudding.  It is best that the challah is a couple of days old and a bit firm.  In fact, to have a firmer challah I particularly like using 50% WW for the challah used to make a strata.

Rye January continues

Today's bake: Ginger-Plum Bread   Zwetschgen-Ingwer Brot (Germany)

The Rye Baker by Stanley Ginsberg

This bread is made from a majority of  Organic Rye-80% Extract (~medium rye flour), some Organic Heirloom Turkey Red Wheat-Cracked and a bit of whole rye which is in the culture.

There are in addition some prunes (Dried/Pitted), grated ginger, and chopped almonds as add-ins that provide a nice flavor and texture to this bread.

I'm using a large pullman pan (15-3/4" x 4" x 4").

I have been switching my limited repertoire of breads over to the "Don't be a bread hostage" way of doing it from the King Arthur website. It has certainly simplified bread making for me and I really like how this recipe makes a more manageable high hydration bread to work with and produces a very soft and fluffy crumb.This is the Trevor Wilson recipe for cranberry spelt bread that I made a few changes to approximate a compromise of both recipes.

I have a big birthday for my partner to plan.  So part of that is to bake one of his favourite cakes, carrot cake.  You will notice that baking cakes isn’t something I do very often, in fact I probably bake fewer than one per year.  So I thought it would be prudent to do a test bake and ensure that the recipe I’m doing tastes good and that I can turn out a decent cake.  I hope to make this a three layer cake and decorate it better, although my decorating skills aren’t that great.

I've been eyeing this one for some time -- http://theryebaker.com/vitebsk-rye/. My partner doesn't like the heaviness of whole grain ryes, so I figured a 100% light rye might intrigue her. Also, in a different thread, where I foolishly argued that I could see no reason to use light or medium rye when you could use whole grain, Ilya recommended that I try a light rye to see how it showcases flavors like fennel and anise.

My family has a lot of birthdays from December to January.  My mother’s is one of them so we are having her over for brunch this weekend.  My favourite thing to make for brunch is a strata, I’ve made a few now and they are always tasty.  One thing I should do but haven’t is bake the challah a couple of days ahead so it can stale a bit.  So I decided I’d bake a slight variation of challah by adding the zest of half an orange to my sourdough challah 50% whole wheat.

      Well, 9/40ths Rye to be exact, but that doesn't roll off the tongue so well.  I haven't had rye flour on hand in a while, so I've been wanting to do a partial rye loaf for a while.  I did a full rye loaf two weeks back, which was tasty but a whole different beast.

Ilya recently started a thread linking to Martin Philip’s recipe on the King Arthur website for a IDY Pan de Cristal.  I’ve always wanted to try baking this unique bread and I’m glad that I have now.  I believe most recipes for this bread have some olive oil in them, so I added that.  Also rather than mixing all the water at once, I bassinaged the water gradually.  I used my Ankarsrum Assistent to mix since I am still learning to use it and want to get as much experience as possible.  It does an awesome job with bassinage.

The trip was a gift to our oldest grandson for his high school graduation--two years after the fact.  Yup, COVID got in the way of that, too.

Since it was Josh's trip, we built it around his interests.  Much fun and lots of great memories but bakeries didn't figure into the mix.  In spite of that, my wife and I were both blown away by the bakeries/patisseries that we did notice in our perambulations.  The creativity and craftsmanship of the bakers who turn out such beautiful loaves and pastries is beyond impressive.

This bread continues my adventures with rye bread, having done a couple of Borodinsky recipes as well as Lithuanian recipes.  The inspiration to give it a try came from the recent posting by alcophile, and I actually began this loaf before Benito posted his bake.  The process differs from almost anything else that I have baked and involves essentially a forty hour poolish followed by one hour for the final mixing, shaping, and proofing.