In the better late than never category, I baked my first ever stollen tonight using Peter Reinhart's recipe in The Bread Baker's Apprentice. I made up some of my own almond paste, using ground almonds, confectioner's sugar and Karo light syrup. I am resisting the urge to sample this until Christmas.
Some days I don't know where my mind goes. I was baking 2 loaves of New York Onion Rye Bread from Peter Reinhart's book Bread Baker's Apprentice. Everything was going smoothly. The loaves were proofing in my make-shift proofer (microwave with cup of boiled water in it) but then disaster struck.
I didn't pay attention to the bread as it was rising. The recipe said 90 minutes to proof so I went with 90 minutes, oh so wrong! Bread was proofed and I hadn't even started the oven! In my tizzy, I set the oven 30F too cool and didn't realize it until 10 minutes or so into the bake. Bleh! So I watched my two loaves of bread meet in the middle of the baking pan as they rose (sideways) on the baking sheet. Argh!! No oven spring for me with that cool oven. Here are the loaves as they look, cooling on the rack. NEXT TIME - I'll check the bread about half way into the proof time. NEXT TIME I'll read the ENTIRE recipe through several times to get it straight in my head and not ASSUME anything.
Lots of baking going on today, in addition to trying out a San Francisco Sourdough recipe from Dave Snyder, pie baking for Thanksgiving was in order. I found a great Sweet Potato Pie recipe on this site which was submitted by SylviaH. It's definitely a keeper.
I also made a pecan pie that's in the oven now--
The San Francisco Sourdough is in its bulk fermentation - I've done one stretch and fold so far and it's looking good. I hope to bake it tomorrow before the Turkey goes in the oven. Happy Thanksgiving to everyone and thank you to Floydm for this wonderful website.
This week our bread to have with soup at lunch time will be olive bread. I've been wanting to try this bread again from the Il Fornaio Baking Book by Franco Galli for quite sometime. I made two changes to the recipe as given. I used 1/4 cup of my 70% hydration whole wheat sourdough starter instead of the 1/4 cup biga. I also used kalamata olives instead of green olives as my husband doesn't really care for the green olives.
The loaf had good oven spring, so I am hopeful that I might even have an open crumb in this bread, which would be a first for me. We shall see tomorrow when we cut into the loaf.
I decided to return to my roots as it were, and reprise an old standard bread recipe from the Tassajara Bread Book, Whole Wheat Bread. I topped the loaf with a little egg wash and some sesame seeds before baking. It's not 100% whole wheat but about 70% whole wheat - (2 1/2 cups ww flour, 1 cup all-purpose flour). I used to make this bread every week for morning toast. After seeing and smelling it, I remember why - it's just good.
My husband requested some seeded sourdough loaves to go with our soup this week. I was happy to find the 'Seedy Whole Wheaty Sourdough' recipe on this site and set out to fulfill the order.
The dough I made could have stood a little more gluten development. I think and I should have done a full 12 hour ferment for the sourdough build instead of 6. I'm also working on better scoring of the loaves before baking. Thanks for the recipe!
