Blog posts

First days of really warm weather and after working in the garden all day yesterday we thought we really deserved pizza.

Fast recipe, inspired by one on the back of the bag of flour: 

1kg Anna Napoletana 00 flour 

680 g lukewarm tap water

12-15g salt

7 g dry yeast 

Mix everything into a rough dough.  Do 2-3 stretch and folds.  Let the dough double,  then divide into balls ( I did 6)

Inspired by, the pizza bible. However, this bake morphed into something completely different. Thick Brooklyn style. Specifically Armondo's, Canarsie-Brooklyn, Rockaway Parkway. (L train station) Thick Sicilian pizza.

The sfincione Palermitano is born. AKA, It's hip to be square

18X12 half sheet pan. 1,100 grams of dough. Three-day dough: Day one starter refresh/build. On day two, mix the final dough. 28 hr. cold ferment/Two hr. room temperature final proof. I realized I was out of barley malt. I substituted 2% Brown sugar. The rest is as written

Recipe in Russian (run it through the google translation) https://brotgost.blogspot.com/2018/12/blog-post.html?fbclid=IwAR2XYpM14tgTXPgoKt1db3XS9petMTSEBnKbZpbSktLuj4YMkiQ_rIiUXxY&m=1

I baked this bread several times with great success,  but this time I made several mistakes and the crumb surely shows it.

First thought looking at this crumb: weak starter

April 20 - 21, 2022.  90th bake.

In my earlier blog post I described how I made my first ever amazake from scratch.  It is delicious, rich and sweet despite there being no added sugar.  Today I am doing a test bake of an Amazake Sourdough Vegan Hokkaido Milk Bread.  The amazake was used to make the tangzhong.  Because it is so sweet I didn’t add any sugar to the dough as I usually would.  I’m hoping that I have enough dough to fill the 10x10x10cm pullman pan I have and that it’ll bake up into a nice cube.

I recently dropped into our local sake maker and picked up another package of koji rice.  My plan was to make my third batch of homemade miso since our first one is disappearing quickly and the second one is just over a month into its fermentation which will take a fully year or so.  However, I borrowed the book Koji Alchemy and have been reading through it and I’m finding it so fascinating and it is giving me some other ideas for my koji rice.

I love this bread and the whole process is so nice

https://youtu.be/p_zZggD827c

In a pint jar I added some rye malt and raisins,  topped it with lukewarm tap water and then splashed in some homemade apple scrap vinegar. After just 10 hours at 38°C it's already showing the signs of fermentation. It's still not ready yet for making a starter, but maybe tomorrow? 

Reading through the Tartine book my curiosity was peaked by some of the various flavor combinations. The idea of sourdough with roasted walnuts, green olives, some herbs...and lemon made me curious in the best of ways. Thankfully it is just a standard sourdough but with inclusions. A LOT of inclusions. 62% of inclusions. So many inclusions that I was a bit concerned when it was being mixed, proofed, and shaped that it might be more inclusion than bread!

FULL RECIPE AND BREAD CALCULATIONS HERE

My better half has been craving a hamburger for a few weeks now. As the resident bread baker who can guarantee that the bread will not have dairy (allergic), it falls to me to make sure we have the proper buns. She told me that we could just use normal bread but no, that just won't due. Instead I returned to a recipe I've done a few times now as it always provides consistent results, can be made in a mixer, and is easy enough to sub in vegan butter and oat or soy-milk to avoid any dairy. 

FULL RECIPE CALCULATIONS HERE

My attempt at Hamelman’s Hot Cross buns from his Bread book. I made these on previous Easter’s and they were always well received. One of the reasons I like his version is because the crossing paste is extra tasty. It is made with butter, sugar, egg, vanilla, lemon zest and flour. I am not going to post his recipe so buy the book. The recipe makes enough paste for four dozen buns and since I was only making two dozen and I didn’t have a smaller tip, I piped it on thick.