New exciting, challenging ideas.

Profile picture for user The Roadside Pie King
The Roadside P… on 17 Mar 2024 at 08:46

Good morning, beautiful artisan bread makers. You have been assimilated.

As the curator here at the sourdough foundation, I am always trying to engage my student ("ME") with laboratory exercises that will provide a challenge. With that being said, for next weeks lab practice I was thinking to concentrate on a formula that over the years has given skilled as well as novice bakers headaches. One that over & over pops up here with cry's for help. Can anyone think of such a formula? This is also going out to our older very knowledgeable members who sadly are MIA. I know you're out there, lurking in the background. Come back with that formula that just came into your mind. I would love to work out the complexities with the help of the hive mind.  Thank you to all, for all your help passed and present. The staff and student of the sourdough foundation appreciation your assistants. The photo is strictly for attention. As you all may know, the sourdough foundation does not subscribe to the Dutch oven method. The vessel pictured will instead be used for braising a corned beef brisket. Smile...

Kink regards,

Will Falzon.

Will said: "You have been assimilated."  No wonder I've been feeling lousy.

You want a challenge that has a recipe and a procedure that is tricky, or requires real skill. The only challenge I can think of is the Courage bagel, which has no recipe and no (maybe 6-day) process. Some members have been trying to figure that one out, and I sure wish they could.

That's more of a challenge than you had in mind: no formula, no process, no nuttin'.

 

I hope you are feeling better real soon ❤️. Meanwhile, I am feeling like making a Irish soda bread after the corned beef brisket and cabbage is done. However, I am also feeling a bit under appreciated.  So, I have to reconcile, exactly who is punished more if I skip it this year. These are hard questions, I will retire to my cave and meditate on the answer.

That is a great idea. However, being the hack that I know I am. Without much in the way of direction, I would just refer to my go to bagel formula. Then call it a day, and praise myself for a job well done. What else have you got?

 

This is quite interesting. It confirms that we all had way to much time on our hands back in the lock down days.

I am looking for a challenge, not to reinvent the wheel. Anyway, being a Brooklyn boy, I am firmly in the camp of, the only true bagel is the NY bagel. Smile... 

Courage Bagel

Ah Panatone. My unicorn bread. ( mystical creature impossible to capture.) My last try was a commercial yeast Bread. I burned it terribly. I am not feeling another panatone adventure. At this moment in time .

Dominique Ansel recipe is good, also Oldman Teh on Insta and youtube.... 

I am so excited about my just posted blog entry that I neglected to thank you Jon! 

I am thinking a live YouTube video of the Gronky taste test is in order!

Baring the fact of a spite filled no soda bread. The Falzon "Feast of Saint Patrick" turned out swimmingly. 

One day I will give some attention to fermentation of other things besides bread. Kumbach, pickles come to mind. . 

Who needs soda bread when you have that perfect country loaf?

I love corned beef. Have you made your own? That is, made up a brine and soaked a brisket for a couple weeks?

The best pastrami I ever had bar none was at Corky and Lenny's deli in the Cleveland area, where I lived for some seven years.  They called it "Romanian pastrami". My uncle, who knew his Jewish delis from Chicago to New York, once detoured on a long drive back to New York so he could visit us (and Corky and Lenny's) and get a pile of their Romanian pastrami to take home to NY.  Greasy but fantastic!

A Reuben sandwich with their pastrami instead of corned beef was out of this world.

Sad to say the deli closed last year.  It had opened in the mid-1950s.

Here's yet another suggestion.  Sourdough English muffins that have the hugely open cavities of a Thomas's English muffin.  Making s/d muffins is easy and they are delicious, but getting such open holes is going to take some exacting development work.  I think it must require a batter whereas I make mine from dough. Even using a batter, it will be a good challenge.

TomP