Tuesday, April 30, 2013
May Day Guiness Loaf
There was some leftover Stout after my wife made Guiness Beef Pies for dinner last evening. It was a good excuse to use the remainder for making bread. For this bake, I used my basic white recipe which is 70% hydration. The Poolish was made last night with 300g of flour. Waiting for it to cool down to eat with some butter and coffee for afternoon tea.
Thursday, January 03, 2013
Wood Fired Oven Pizza
The recent weather was possibly the worst time to have an outdoor party and yet we threw caution to the wind and just went ahead with the plan to make pizzas in our wood fired beehive oven. Two days earlier, I had checked the weather forecast for the week and it was supposed to rain every day of the week.
The day before the party, I came home drenched as I was caught in a very heavy downpour. The heavy drenching made me confident that the following day would be dry enough for lighting up my oven. (It turned out eventually that that day was the only dry day in the week.)
I decided not to bake any bread as I wanted to focus on the Pizza. I made some improvements in my loading of the Pizza using a flat metal sheet. The Pizza was assembled on this sheet which can then be transported with ease. The Pizza attempt was a great success as our guests finished off all the 6 Pizzas.
Sunday, December 23, 2012
I get occasional email queries from fellow bakers about the ring patterns in some of my bread. In the early days of my bread making adventures, I too, had wondered where those patterns came from. I found out eventually that they came off special proofing baskets called Brotforms.
Back then, it was not possible to find them in Singapore so I tried making my own. The pictures above were salvaged from an old blog which I fear will shut down one day and the postings there will vaporise. This posting was promted by a query that I had read in my favorite bread forum The Fresh Loaf. It stirred back fond memories of the fun I had while making my own Brotforms. I hope it will help fellow bakers gung-ho enough to make their own.
Brotforms can also be ordered online from
The link to my original posting in Angelfire
Sunday, December 02, 2012
A busy weekend with baking on Saturday and Sunday. I promised my favorite Durian seller with something Italian. I have been on a Durian binge this season and a whole month of Durian kaya is surely enough for anyone, even for a hard-core Durian lover like myself. Who else will have Musang King Durian for afternoon tea?
This foccacia is modelled after Dan Lepard's which calls for the addition of some levain. As I have lost my recipe for the Laksa pesto, I had to wing it. The ingredients included Laksa leaves, 7 bulbs of roasted garlic, Parmesan cheese, toasted walnuts as I did not have pine nuts on hand. The pesto was seasoned with sea salt. ground black pepper and a dash of lemon juice. All were added by feel assisted by the tongue.
Sunday, November 25, 2012
Visit to Raub durian plantation
I came across these photos taken in May when I was in Kuala Lumpur to learn guitar making. This stirred up wonderful memories of the fantastic 2 weeks I spent up north. During a week end break, my host brought me to a durian plantation but unfortunately, the durians were still too young. They say that Musang King durians from Bentong/Raub area are the best in Malaysia. I was very, very disappointed that I was not able to feast on those beauties hanging from the branches. That is why I have been making up for lost opportunity now that the Musang King season is here now. It helps that I know a friendly durian seller near my work place. I was able to sate my insatiable appetite for the King of the King of Fruits.
We made a stop over in Bentong. I knew that this was a hot bed of CPM activities in the 50s/60s. I felt that I was transported into a time warp. The coffee shop still had coffee on a charcoal brazier. How rustic can it get.
When I was at the durian plantation, I learnt about tropical stingless Trigona bees and their miraculous Propolis honey. In the wild, they make their hives in hollow tree trunks. The enterprising bee-keepers cut the nest off the tree and placed boxes on the trunk. The bees will expand their hive in any hollow space. They seal the hive with bee resin called Propolis which has many medicinal properties. It is a natural antibiotic, antifungal agent. I had the opportunity to suck the Propolis honey off the hive.
Although the Tartine country loaf is a very nice bread, the only problem with it is that it requires the baker to be at home the whole day. The three hour bulk fermentation with stretch and folds every 30 minute and the final proof of 2-3 hours leaves you stranded at home.
To overcome this little problem especially for those who have to go out and make a living, I came up with a work-around so that I can still bake something similar when I get home from work.
This bread uses a ripe starter as flavoring agent but uses commercial yeast to boost leavening. Nothing original about this as many people do that(and get flamed by sourdough purists). In the morning before work, I feed the starter with 100g of flour and water. This will yield 200g of ripe starter when I return from work. I usually feed my culture with whole-wheat flour. This will form the 10% whole-wheat component called for in the Tartine recipe.
The main dough is just 900g of type 55 flour. As the starter is100% hydration, the amount of water to be added is 650g. This makes it a 75% hydration bread. The formula calls for 2 teaspoons of dry instant yeast and 3 teaspoons of sea salt. Oil is optional but recently I am starting to favor adding some oil into the dough. This helps to mitigate crust deterioration in the tropics where I live. Without the oil, the crunchy crust deteriorates into elephant hide. With the oil, the toughness is reduced. Of course all these problems can be eliminated with a bit of refreshing in the oven before consumption.
With the aid of the commercial yeast, the bulk fermentation is just 2 hours. The final proof is 1 hour. In this way, the bread can be completed in the evening when I am at home. The baking is done in a dutch oven for best results. The result is very similar to the Tartine country bread.
Sunday, November 18, 2012
Finally looking like the Tartine Country Loaf
I decided to give the Tartine one more shot and it turned out very well. Not so for the 100% WW loaves which had to wait for their turn in the oven. They were slightly over-proofed by the time I loaded them in . I did the two loaves to see how the Tartine process work with 100%WW since I have plenty of the flour on hand. Having done them, I can see that with proper proofing times, they should turn out equally well. That's a project that I will do in the near future.
Since the cast iron pot worked well, I took out another, clay pot which I got from IKEA years ago to try. It worked equally well. I got beautifully opened ears this time round and my wife took out the Tartine book to compare after I told her about the results of the bake.
One loaf will be going to my favorite Durian seller who sold me 3 enormous Musang King Durians at an incredibly low price.
Friday, November 16, 2012
Starting to look like Tartine
The weekend is here. I was waiting for the weekend to come to try out the dutch oven method advocated in Chad Robertson's book. I took out the sourdough culture from the fridge to feed it on Thursday. On Friday evening, I fed it one more time. As I will be using 200g of the 100% hydration starter, I fed the culture in that proportion.
By Saturday morning, it had nicely more than doubled. The recipe called for 900g of White flour and 100g of Wholewheat flour. Chad's baker's percentage uses the European method. This has created a bit of controversy in The Fresh Loaf forum with people criticizing him for making such a fundamental 'mistake'.
The US method of baker's percentages is based strictly on the TOTAL amount of flour that will be used in the dough, including the starter. The European method computes the starter as a separate ingredient, the amount of which is stated as a percentage of the flour used in the main dough. It is simply a matter of definition and the difference is purely cultural.
After the 3 hour Stretch and Fold thing, the dough was doubled and bubbly. Since my cast iron pot is oval in shape, I shaped the loaf as a batard. The other was shaped as a boule and baked free-form. I got much better results today. My only regret was in over-flouring the cloth. The loaf from the pot had volume and a nice ear. The boule turned out not too badly also.
When I cut the bread, I was quite happy with the crumb. I buttered a small piece for my wife to try and she remarked that it had excellent flavor. What more can I ask for.