Blogs

I’ve wanted to make a bread done with this star shaping for quite sometime so decided that Christmas baking was the perfect time to try it out.  It is fun and pretty easy overall to do.  Because I needed this to be done fairly quickly I didn’t convert this recipe to sourdough and instead just used IDY.

IMG_9998.jpeg

Makes 2 stars (8 servings each) or 12 rolls.  

Ingredients

3¾ to 4¼ cups all-purpose flour 480 g (4 cups)

4 tsp. ground ginger

4 tsp. ground cinnamon

½ tsp. ground cloves

1 pkg. active dry yeast (1 ¾  tsp. IDY or about 4.9 g)

¾ cup milk (184 g)

1 cup plain mashed potato

⅓ cup butter (76 g)

⅓ cup molasses (93.3 g)

1 tsp. salt

2 eggs

½ cup packed brown sugar

¼ cup butter, melted

Powdered sugar (optional)

HANDS ON 30 min.
RISE 1 hour 15 min.
REST 10 min.
BAKE 20 min. at 375°F

1. In a large bowl stir together 480 g flour, 3 tsp. of the ginger, 1 tsp. of the cinnamon, ¼ tsp. of the cloves, and the yeast. In the bowl of your mixer stir milk, mashed potato, ⅓ cup melted butter, the molasses, eggs and salt. Add flour mixture to the liquid mixture. Mix until gluten is well developed.

2. Turn dough out onto and shape dough into a ball. Place in a lightly greased bowl, turning to grease surface of dough. Cover; let rise until doubled in size (60 to 120 minutes).  Can do a cold retard at this point.

3. Punch dough down. Turn out onto a lightly floured surface and divide into eight equal portions. Cover; let rest 10 minutes. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.

4. For filling, in a small bowl stir together the brown sugar and remaining 1 tsp. ginger, 3 tsp. cinnamon, and ¼ tsp. cloves.

5. For each star, on a lightly oiled surface roll one portion of dough into a 10-inch round. Place on a prepared sheet. Brush with some of the ¼ cup melted butter. Sprinkle with a slightly rounded Tbsp. of the filling. Repeat two times, stacking rounds. Top with another dough round for a total of four. Brush with melted butter. Place a 2½-inch round cutter in the center of the dough stack, making a slight indent. Use a sharp knife to cut 16 strips, cutting from the cutter to the edge of the stack. Gently twist one of the strips two times. For the strip next to it, twist the strip in the opposite direction. Repeat to make eight arms to the star. Remove cutter. Repeat with remaining four dough rounds and filling. Let rise until nearly double in size (about 30-60 minutes); brush with additional melted butter.

6. Preheat oven to 375°F. Bake 20 minutes or until golden. Once cooled on a rack, dust with powdered sugar (if using). Makes 2 stars (8 servings each).

IMG_9994.jpeg

IMG_0001.jpeg

I haven’t eaten this yet so cannot report back on my personal experience with it.  However, everyone who has tried has raved about it.  I still have a couple more of these to bake so perhaps I’ll have a chance to actually eat some.

My index of bakes.

Formula:

* Additional flavourings were added: After mixing the primo impasto, honey from the recipe was mixed with vanilla, lemon zest and a splash of dark rum. This was left to infuse overnight before being mixed into the emulsion the following day.

✝  A splash of milk (UK: Semi skimmed) was added to 4 whole eggs (UK: large) to make up the desired weight of 236g.

✝✝ Cocoa butter was substituted with quality white chocolate.

Method:

Per il primo impasto, begin by mixing the flour with the leaven and almost all the eggs. When the dough becomes smooth, add the remaining eggs. After a few minutes incorporate the sugar, the salt and the lastly the butter. Let it rise at 25-26C for around 12 hours or when it reaches triple the volume.

Per il secondo impasto, mix half of the first dough with the flour and the malt. When the dough becomes smooth add the other half, the salt and lastly the egg yolks, a little at a time. When the dough is elastic and homogenous incorporate the emulsion, prepared in advance by creaming the butter with sugar and amalgamating well the other ingredients. Finish the mix adjusting the consistency with the fresh cream.

Transfer to a container and let rest for around 30 minutes at 28C. After this time, scale pieces of the desired weight, shape into a boule and place on butter boards and hold them at 28C for around 60 minutes. Shape and place in the moulds. Allow to rise at 28-30C for around 6 hours or until the dough reaches the edges of the mould.

Baking times:

500g: 30 minutes at 170C
750g: 40 minutes at 170C
1000g: 50 minutes at 170C

Remove from the oven and let the pandoro cool for around 60 minutes before removing from the mould. 
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

LM - Not fully tripled but pleasant alcohol aromas within.

Primo Impasto - After12 hours the primo impasto more than tripled in volume!

The leavening power of my lievito madre is proving very potent. However acidity issues persist. Primo impasto pH: Initial: 6.27 End: 4.21. It just goes to show that simply pushing the yeast potency is not enough to mitigate acidification.

The risen primo impasto had quite a strong acetic aroma emanating from it while on the counter, however the taste was very different and tasted completely non-sour with just a very pleasant carbonic fizz.

The final mix was relatively easy to do and went without issue. By the end of the mix the finished dough was supple and elastic and when removed from the mixing bowl was a very extensible and relaxed to cover a large part of the counter. pH = 4.5 (too low - should be >5).

I rounded the dough a couple of times during the rest period to encourage it to hold a higher form before performing the final round and placing into the pandoro mould.


Finished dough - After mix rest then rounded (pagnottella)

Finished dough moulded

Fully proofed

The proof was done at a slightly lower temperature of 24-25C than the 28-30 prescribed. Proof time 9 hours instead of 6 but that's about right considering the temperature difference.

Baked

Just in time for Christmas, I wanted to get a Holiday bread bake in before the festive season began. It's been years since I baked a Pandoro and I'm glad I did. Being less dicey than Panettone since it doesn't require hanging which can be make or break!

Happy Christmas all.

Michael

Let me say at the outset that I've been reading this site for nearly 20 years but never felt compelled to post anything until this week... I've also been baking professionally for a long time and never encountered a challenge quite like this... they don't call it the Mount Everest of baking for nothing!

I've made non-sourdough (read, inauthentic) panettoni before and been satisfied with them until last year, when I purchased a copy of Sourdough Panettone and Vienoisserie by Tefri-Chambelland just before New Year’s Eve, looked it over, and quickly put it back on the shelf. Damn that book is technical! 

November rolled around and I decided to give it another go, reading the book cover to cover (multiple times) before trying my hand. I built a pasta madre following the instructions from Eva's Blog which no doubt many are familiar with, and things went pretty smoothly despite some initial problems with temperature control in a “cozy” Brooklyn apartment. Once the weather cooled and our apartment regularly started dropping to 65 degrees at night things felt like they were taking off, with a slight hiccup somewhere around Thanksgiving when I switched from Caputo's Manitoba Oro to Petra 6384 flour. I also decided to switch from the water storage to the bound method at around the same time, because I was hoping to get away with keeping a smaller starter (the water method seems to require a larger feedings—at least 200g—and I wanted to stick to 100g for efficiency’s sake).

I tried baking with the starter for the first time about 3 weeks ago even though it was clearly not strong enough. I did the three preparatory warm refreshments and I knew a panettone would be out of the question so I chose a recipe from SPAV with fewer ingredients (Sourdough Brioche) and, as expected, it never rose. It came out of the oven more like an omelet than a bread. I pressed forward, this time doing 3 days of preparatory warm refreshments and decided to attempt another bake. I knew it was risky, but I decided to make a panettone this time, and chose a recipe from SPAV more or less at random. I built a little proof box out foam core and a seedling heating mat, but the 1st dough still failed to rise. I made the second dough anyway (I know) and... you know the drill.

I tucked the starter away in the fridge for a week to regroup, and when I brought it back out I proceeded with four days of warm refreshments before attempting another dough. Things were really going smoothly! The starter was consistently reaching a pH of 4.15 after about 3h 45m at 28C and nearly tripling in volume. It seemed like the stars were aligning.

This time I decided to take everyone's advice and use the Giorilli formula which is supposed to be very reliable and forgiving. The dough came together beautifully; the primo impasto has a higher hydration than the previous dough I had tried and so my Kitchenaid thanked me as well. I set it in the proofer at 25C.

Got up in the morning to.... nothing. At best, the dough had risen by about half, but it had only been about 8 hours and people say it can take 14 to 16, and 25C seemed cold compared to other recipes I'd read, so I decided to throw caution to the wind and bump the temperature up to 29C. Wouldn’t you know it, but the dough had tripled by 1pm! But, unfortunately, the pH had dropped to 3.6 and when I took the temp of the bottom of the container (which I had foolishly set directly on the heating pad in the proofing box) it was 32C.

The dough was a little sticky, but it still had a decent structure, so I once again threw caution to the wind and pressed forward. I had read that if your dough is too acidic it can be nearly impossible to incorporate the yolks and butter into the second dough but was pleasantly surprised at how easily it came together. The pH after mixing the second dough was unsurprisingly low at 4.8, but there was nothing to be done about that, so I divided it into two molds and set them back in the proofer at 28C, this time being sure to elevate them so they weren't in direct contact with the heating pad.

5 hours. 6 hours. 7 hours. Nada. The cool sheet pan and the mass of the dough had dropped the temp in the proof box when I put them in and the 40 watt heating element was having trouble getting the temp back up. Maybe the dough’s just too cold? I'll keep waiting. By 9pm we're finally up to 28 degrees, and the dough is nearly halfway up the molds. 10pm rolls around and I'm confident the dough could climb to the top of the mold if I gave it more time, but I'm losing steam. At 10:30 I decide to throw them in the oven. I tried to score the top of one, but the dough is sticky and soft so it didn’t bother scoring the second. I didn’t bother glazing them, either. 

I sat on the floor in front of the oven and watched them climb the top of the mold, so maybe all’s not lost. After about an hour of baking they had reached an internal temp of 200F, so I flipped them upside down to cool and headed to bed, not sure what I'd wake up to.  

To my surprise, they're not so bad! Under proofed sure, but soft and surprisingly not sour. I want to do better next time but this is exhausting! 

So what’s my path forward here… more warm refreshments? More purifications? Go back to the water storage? A better-insulated proofing box? Better luck next time? Would love to hear from the experienced panettieri here!

Please see here and here to learn more about concentrated lactic acid sourdough (CLAS). 

I've been mulling over what to do with that hefty 50-pound bag of durum berries I stowed away during the pandemic. Noodle-making was my go-to, but it became a chore after a while. I even considered buying a noodle machine for convenience: the kind that extrudes noodles once you add all the ingredients, but guess what? Nature stepped in and saved me the trouble—bugs invaded the bag, and that was it for my durum berries. Here's the final loaf I made totally clueless about those bugs:

Ingredients:

Pre-dough

Prepare a puree with

23% milk

46% overripe bananas

95% fresh whole durum flour ground in the Vitamix

5% whole durum flour from durum CLAS

7.5% water from durum CLAS

17% egg

0.2% gold yeast

mix until a moist dough forms; do not overmix

28C x 240mins using Zo's "Rise 1"

Dough

predough

0.5% gold yeast

1.5% salt

1.5% ground cinnamon

10% butter

mix until incorporated, then 

38% toasted mix of 

walnuts

hazelnuts

almonds

pecans

38% craisins 

mix in extra banana-milk puree if needed

Total dough weight: ~750g

for a 19cm x 11cm x 8.5cm tin with a lid (holds 1000ml)

Bulk

using Zo's "Rise 3"

38C x 50mins

Shape

place the dough into the tin lined with parchment slings

smooth the top with a spatula (optional)

Prove

using Zo's "Rise 3"

38C x 40mins

Bake

using the 6Q Instant Vortex Clear Cook Air Fryer

line parchment paper on top of the dough

close the lid

375Fx10mins

350Fx15mins

flip

350Fx10mins

click to enlarge

 Ithat I can bake two loaves in the air fryer at once whenever I feel like it.

Enjoy it the ball-law-yau style

I have another 100% durum bread, but this time it's made with refined, extra fancy durum flour.

It had action on day 2 & 3 after that it slowed down then stopped .. using King Arthur bread flour .. was feeding once a day for 3 days then twice a day.. I accidentally discarded on day two… it’s in my microwave with a paper towel and rubber band … the first few days I had the lid on then switched upon reading .. maybe that’s the problem? Is it saveable? 
my hair accidentally dipped into one of them just a few mins ago should I throw it out? Did I poison them? 

Eureka! Though trial and error I have successfully recreated the authentic, iconic NYC Kaiser roll. Brought to America by our German Jewish neighbors. These are the big ones of breakfast sandwich fame. 

Check another one off the list.

Kaiser rolls-✅

This is a variation on the Infinity Bread from the recent Community Bake.  The original used emmer as the third flour, and in a subsequent bake I posted a bread with einkorn.  This time spelt became the third flour, and I am pleased with the result.  Not as much oven spring as with the other two, but that seems typical of spelt.  The flavor is great, and the crust has a nice crispiness.

For this bake I increased the amounts by 30% to achieve larger loaves, one of which was given to the crew at our local veterinarian office.  We kept the other, and here are photos of the two loaves as well as the crumb from ours.

The loaves weighed 1172 grams and 1145 grams and each was in the oven for 44 minutes.  Thanks again to PMCool for shepherding the Community Bake that began this adventure.

I ran across this post by CalBeachBaker of Jalapeno Cheese Bread a while ago and put it on my to bake list.  Yesterday was the day.  

I prepared the cornmeal soaker before entering the formula into my own spreadsheet and deciding to scale it down to one loaf.  Since I had the full soaker I decided to put it all in, which resulted in a fairly wet dough that was challenging to work with. I had my doubts but they all went away with the first bite, which was delicious.  I don't know if I'd use double the soaker again, but the extra corn meal gives it a great crunch for sure.  

The other change I made was that I was short on jalapenos (only 3 on hand) so I supplemented the bulk of the peppers with some roasted Hatch chiles that I had in the freezer.  

The flavor of this bread is really good, my version resulted in a fair amount of spice from the peppers, softness from the cheese and crunch from the cornmeal.  Overall very tasty.  I don't have the book the formula originated from (Sourdough Recipes for Rustic Fermented Breads Sweets, Savories, and More - Sarah Owens) but I do have it on hold at the library and am looking forward to giving it a once over in the new year.

my adapted formula:

I didn't make many baguettes for several years due to having a gas oven.  Then I got an oblong combo cooker which made them, along with batards, possible again with gas.  But now that I have an electric oven after ten years with gas I remember what I was missing.  These were baked on the stone with 5 ice cubes in a cast iron pan for steam.

I've been toying with a formula for baguettes for the past few months. While I usually scale down recipes to one loaf, I like to make at least two baguettes.  I don't know if I'll stop trying other formulas, but this one sure tasted good with still a bit of warmth out of the oven.  I may just settle on this version for a while.  

Hammelman has his Vermont sourdough, and I suppose mine has now been in Idaho long enough to be taken over by the native cultures.  It started out in Oregon (~20 years there), spent some time in Vermont last winter making breads daily at a bed and breakfast, and now has made it to the Idaho mountains where I plan to keep it for a while.

So here is my current version of a baguette with just enough whole wheat and rye to give it that good country flavor.

Please see here and here to learn more about concentrated lactic acid sourdough (CLAS). 

These days, I mostly bake bread using the air fryer and occasionally depend on the bread machine. I reserve the big oven solely for baking for those who hold a special place in my heart as VIPs.

One day, one of these VIPs came home. I made his favorite bread—bagels—in the big oven, following the Montreal-style bagel workflow that captivated me when I first tried it some time ago. Using this process to create the delightful crunchy-chewy bagels I adore proves far more efficient than the traditional New York approach. Incorporating CLAS into the process creates a win-win combo that delivers both crunchiness, chewiness, and flavorful bagels in under two hours.

My bagels tend to be on the sweeter side. To dial down the sweetness, simply reduce the amount of sugar in the dough and honey in the boiling water.

Ingredients:

3% whole rye flour from rye CLAS

97% beehive AP

6% sugar

5% egg

5.7% water from rye CLAS

49% warm water or milk

1.3 - 1.7% avocado oil

1.5% salt (NOT optional, unless you use VERY sweet boiling water to mask the blandness of a salt-free dough. Otherwise, you'll risk ruining the entire batch.)

0.2% dry yeast

0.9% Briess CBW® dark dry malt extract

RAW sesame seeds for coating

Total flour used: 1 kg

2.5L H₂O 

6 TBSP  honey

Mix

develop the dough FULLY

DT 30C

Bulk

33-36-40C x 45mins

Temperature fluctuations due to using an electric blanket for bulk.

Divide

@~140g

Store the divided dough in the fridge to slow down further fermentation.

Shape

Store the shaped dough in the fridge to slow down further fermentation.

Line a half-sheet pan with parchment paper and sprinkle it with cornmeal made with pulsed flaked corn.

click to enlarge

Boil 2.5L of water with 6 TBSP of honey.

Boil the shaped bagels for ~ 20 seconds on each side or until they float.

Coat the boiled bagels with seeds.

Bake

6 bagels at once

no stone no steam

preheat to 460F

460Fx10

turn

425Fx5

turn

400Fx5

click to enlarge

Toasted sesame, homegrown chives, and cream cheese

P.S. 20231216

Chinese "bagels" (1) and (2) were new to me until recently.

The VIP got a taste of the 'real deal' in Montreal. Frankly, if these bagels are as bland as the salt-free recipe the bakery handed out, I'll definitely pass on them.