The Fresh Loaf

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Inifinity Loaf and Biscotti

Sugarowl's picture
Sugarowl

Inifinity Loaf and Biscotti

I did the Infinity loaf challengeon October 30, but I'm just now getting around to posting it. I did not really like how the bread came out. It was very crumbly and a bit sandy. That said, I'm not really partial to cornbread either.

The "other" flours I used were rye, oat flour, and corn meal. For seeds, I used soaked bulgur wheat and toasted pecan pieces. The inclusions were fine. I'm not so sure about the cornmeal and oat flour though. I'll try it again after the holidays. And soak the cornmeal next time.

I posted somewhere else the exact quantities so I'll go back and look at that later.Found it: https://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/73115/nothing-too-exiciting-here#comment-527139

The biscotti that I made came out pretty good. I did this November 4. on The only thing is that I should've sliced them a little thinner or baked them longer. Or both. the recipe I used is from Joyofbaking.com: Chocolate Almond Biscotti. The only changes I made were to use toasted pecans instead of the almonds. The dough was a little tacky.

 

Sorry for the late posts, it's been really hectic around here.In October, I made around 3 dozen muffins plus 3 dozen cookies every week for 3 weeks for a fundraiser. Not much sold. But when I was at their display, it was so overcrowded with prepackaged snacks that it made sense that they didn't sell.

Currently I have 300g of starter rising to start 3 different breads tomorrow: two chocolate breads with cherries and pecans and one I'm not completely sure about yet.Probably a whole wheat and bread flour tangzong milk bread.

On Monday and Tuesday I'll be baking bread, cookies, and muffins for when we go see my parents for Thanksgiving. The cookies with be sugar, oatmeal, and 2 kinds of biscotti: The one I just posted and one with cocoa powder and cranberries. Also part of my future lineup is to make a 1/2 semolina biscotti to see if the texture is different when I come back.

Comments

The Roadside Pie King's picture
The Roadside Pi...

The biscotti turned out very well! I am going to give the Semolina biscotti one more try with a few drops 💧💦 more water, before I go ahead and switch gears to a different formula. Thanks for posting! 

Best,

Will F.

Sugarowl's picture
Sugarowl

I made the semolina biscotti and I had to add and extra 30g of flour to get the dough to be not so wet. I also had to flour the counter and the dough to shape it. I only subbed half of the all purpose for the semolina flour. I think maybe semolina flour is just not as absorbent as all-purpose. Perhaps they needed a rest period to allow it to absorb more, but maybe looking at some bread bakes where only semolina was used and compare the hydration levels to an equivalent loaf. That might yield a clue at least.

The biscotti were also more fragile than the the other ones, but in a good way. The all purpose ones were more tough.

With over mixing, it's very easy to do with cookie dough and muffin batter. If I have mix-ins (nuts, chocolate chips, etc) I add them when most of the flour has been mixed in (imagine a light dusting of flour on top) and stop as soon as all the flour is mixed in. Maybe this is why I have a hard time mixing bread dough. I'm just not used to mixing dough so much, but I'm getting better at it.

The Roadside Pie King's picture
The Roadside Pi...

I concur on the over mixing. I was able to achieve much better results with the Semolina biscotti. It seems I was overly stretching out the logs. That being said, I am now working on perfecting a very pancake batter like AP flour formula for anisette toast biscotti.  For this one I am thinking I need to bake in a loaf pan to stop the biscotti from becoming to thin. Maybe I will test this theory out tomorrow? Meanwhile, after eating the whole double batch. I have concluded that the very thin crisp biscotti were very good in there own right.

Isand66's picture
Isand66

That biscotti looks fantastic and love your different variations.   For the bread I suggest using corn flour instead of meal and I think you will eliminate the sandy texture.  I used some I milled myself in my Affinity bake which I posted on the main stream.

Happy Thanksgiving!