Blog posts

After coming across Benny's Red Miso and Furikake post, I knew I had to try it!

Still struggling with bakers percentages, so omitted the miso for this first try... Just in case things ended up too salty.

Some things that I did differently as well (Sorry Benny!):

- Did not laminate in the furikake. Added in at my 2nd set of coil folds during BF
- Followed the flour values from one of The Bread Code's recipes (this has worked very well for me!)
- Added in diastatic malt

Maurizio Leo has quite a nice "Stout country recipe" on his web site, although he has promised an improved version for some years (as he did note that the bread could be better with more beer in the recipe).

This is a bread recipe from a local baker here in Toronto who teaches baking Centennial College, Matthew James Duffy.  I made minor changes to it and put it into the spreadsheet.  This is my first run at this, and probably won’t be the last if it tastes as good as it smell. Based on the cracks on the sides of the loaf I suspect this is under fermented a bit.  We’ll see tomorrow when I slice it, given the amount of rye I suspect it will benefit for at least an overnight rest.

Have always been curious about the widely-raved porridge loaf and decided to give it a try!

This version is a mix of The Bread Code's last sourdough recipe and The Perfect Loaf's take on tartine's porridge loaf, because:

1. I am terribly afraid of high hydration recipes. Have had past experiences where i have broken down in tears after trying to slap and fold/ handling an extremely wet dough.

The final request for the long weekend was a basic "white" sourdough that would be sized well for a toaster.  I decided to make a blonde with cross loaf scoring to make it lengthen instead of spread and bloom.  I do like the look of the long score with a big bloom, but I must say there's something to be said for the "clean" look of this scoring too.  

I was due for a starter refresh, so in this case, I used starter discard (6-hour feed discard) as seed instead of building a levain.

In planning meals for the week we decided that one night we wanted to just have a nice sandwich for dinner. A request was put in for an oat bread of some kind. Not having a go to recipe for this of course it was time to scour the fresh loaf. I ran across this beautiful post from Chelseasf and decided it was the way to go. I took her recipe and followed it but the hydration was way too high yet again. This is a trend I have seen in the Tartine recipes.

Anis Bouabsa baguettes have been very popular on TFL over the years and I realized that I’ve only baked them three times so far.  Only once plain, another time with a sesame seed coat and then a third time with chocolate (this was so good).  Since there’s been chatter about Bouabsa baguettes recently I thought I’d try a fourth bake.  I so seldom bake with IDY I was very anxious about over proofing.  I don’t think they are over proofed but I do think my scores were a touch shallow.

I got a bag of Rouge de Bourdeaux (85% extraction) flour from Dayspring Farms recently and have been wanting to test out the flavor of it.  Here's a quick write up of my first go-rounds with it.  

My first attempt was a purist attempt to get an unclouded sense of the flour:

100% Rouge de Bourdeaux flour (85%) extraction

80% hydration

standard process and timing (as much as this current heat will allow) except for a slightly longer autolyse

I’ve done swirled, flavored milk breads before but they were based on another baker’s formula. This is my first time doing a swirled milk bread based on my 25% whole wheat Hokkaido milk bread recipe. If you look closely at the formula I’ve greatly increased the percent pre-fermented flour. The reason for this is that this dough is even more enriched than usual. Both the matcha paste and cocoa have extra sugar added to them. Without the extra fermentation from the larger amount of levain, there is a great risk that the dough would ferment extremely slowly.

The other request for the weekend was a porridge bread.  I've made this one quite a few times now, and it's becoming a go-to bread when I get a request for a loaf.  To-date, I've always made the porridge as a soaker about 1-2 hours before final mix.  This time I made it as a mash following Benny's recent post.  My usual mash method followed Peter Rhinehart's (heat water to 165 deg F, add grains, hold temp at 150 deg F for 1-3 hours).  For this bake, I cooked the porridge in the microwave until it just started to boil (about 40 seconds) and then set in on the co