works of wanderlust

Tag: baking

  • Lotsa Bread

    I’ve been thinking about bread a lot more than I’ve been writing about it here.

    Eating it too.

    I crossed yet another sourdough milestone this past weekend when I extracted from my hot oven a pair of pandemic bread loaves, loaves numbered two-hundred-and-forty-nine and two-hundred-and-fifty.

    Yes, I keep track.

    And yes, I’ve baked 250 loaves of sandwich bread in the last two years since that fateful day when I got sent home from the office to work in my cold basement.

    My starter, which turns three next month, is mature and active and beautiful. I pulled it from the fridge that same afternoon to warm up on the counter, prepping my plans for bread baking even before setting up my laptop for work.

    Two years of bread. Three years of sourdough. Two hundred and fifty sandwich loaves and so many other random baking experiments that had I not kept careful record of I might not even believe it myself.

    In that time…

    My flour collection has rotated through all purpose bags, to generic supply-chain shortage stocks, to small mill local flours, to artisan bakery bags, and grocery store best for bread varieties.

    I’ve played with beers replacing water.

    I’ve dabbled in mix-ins and spices and cheeses and sweetness levels.

    I’ve made bagels and pizza dough and buns and pan bread.

    It’s been two years of hundreds of hours of baking that has taught me so much about bread yet has only just whet my appetite to learn more. And there is lots more to learn.

    I go back to the office (at least part time) in a couple weeks and the mid-day bread baking breaks will shift to accommodate that new life.

    It’s a little sad, but then again, when I started this and was only a couple dozen loaves in I joked with my daughter that someday she would inherit the “pandemic bread starter” that bit of flour and water and yeast that helped sustain us through a weird time in history.

    And it really did.

  • Baking Sourdough Bagels

    Now that we’re a few solid days into February it seemed appropriate that I acknowledge the fine dusting of flour on the floor, walls and furniture that is my loosely stated New Year’s resolutions.

    I had been lamenting the lack of variation in my sourdough adventures and looking forward to a year of bread-based experimentation in the form of baked goods like doughnuts, English muffins and bagels.

    So, it’s good that I can report I’ve checked at least one of those items off my list: bagels.

    My initial attempt at making bagels — not just sourdough bagels, but bagels, period — full stop was based on a blurry-lined recipe I found online that was dancing between a New York style versus a Montreal-style bagel.

    Sweetened, dry dough. Slow rise. Thick and chewy exterior.

    The Ingredients

    200g active sourdough starter
    360g warm tap water
    635g bread flour
    30ml honey
    12g salt
    60g granulated sugar
    10ml baking soda
    1 egg white, whisked
    sesame seeds, to taste

    The flour, water, salt, starter, and honey went together just as I would have usually put together a basic bread dough. Blend. Hydrate. Fold. Rest. Fold. Repeat. And finally into the fridge for about 16 hours.

    Things changed up on the back end, when after I let the dough warm back up for about an hour, I weighed out twelve equal(ish) portions and shaped into rings. The dough being fairly dry, this was a tough thing to do, at least in as much as I was hoping for smooth, beautiful loops. I wound up with scraggly rings that evened out a bit as they rose but even after twelve hours on the counter still bore my (trademark?) handmade look.

    A pot of boiling water to which the granulated sugar and baking soda joined in to make a sweet alkaline broth gave each of the bagels, two at a time in my medium pot, a thirty-second-per-side bath before landing on a parchment-lined baking sheet.

    A quick egg white wash on the top and a generous sprinkle of sesame seeds, and the dozen bagels were into the 450F oven for a solid 20 minutes before extraction.

    They definitely had a homemade look, but the kid — a bagel aficionado already at age fourteen — scarfed two and declared them worthy. I guess I’m going to need to keep that recipe handy for another batch soon.

  • Local Flours Sours: Duchess Bread (Part One)

    You know your family thinks you are slightly obsessed about something when supporting your hobby winds up under the Christmas tree in holiday gift form.

    After baking some hundreds of loaves of sourdough the last couple years, I guess my family has noticed my obsession. This year I received a 5kg bag of bread flour under the Christmas tree.

    But let me back up…

    There is a well-known local French-style bakery in Edmonton called Duchess Bake Shop.

    There are now two locations, but for years but one address served a frequently long line up of customers selling pastries and sweets from a building in a gentrified neighbourhood just west of the downtown core.

    I’m not really a sweets and confections guy, but I respect a good local bakery, and I’ve stood in my share of queues for a box of goodies from Duchess.

    My wife, on the other hand, will line up for a week for the right cookie. And in her quest to locate and single-handedly support all our local bakeries through tough pandemic financial times, she has become well acquainted with the online menus of many of these local establishments.

    As it turns out, Duchess not only sells baked goods but also sells baking ingredients, including — that’s right — 5kg bags of their own custom bread flour blend.

    Holiday mode now falling behind us as we resume our normal back to the grind lives, I cracked open my Christmas present and prepped my standard sandwich loaf dough with 500g of bakery bread flour blend.

    Now details on both the bag and the website are scarce, so I don’t know exactly what makes this flour special or unique in any way. Maybe it’s locally milled. Maybe it’s a unique blend prepared for the French bakery’s secret receipes. Or maybe it’s just flour and it has been bagged for the sole purpose of supporting their charity of choice.

    Either way, I’ve got a pair of loaves proofing on the counter and my obsession-meets-gift flour will soon be transformed into some delicious sourdough. It gives a new meaning to “Christmas bread.”

    Check back for part two to find out how it turned out!

  • Salted Toffee Crisps

    For the span of a whole weekend in early December it seemed like I couldn’t look on my social media feeds and subscriptions without seeing a recipe for some kind of homemade chocolate toffee bar.

    In fact, I saw this (or a variation of this) recipe online on Youtube, Instagram, and Twitter no less than four times before I got curious enough to copy the ingredients into my shopping list and try my hand at baking my own version.

    What is your best winter treat recipe this year?

    It turns out it was a fast and simple treat with lots of room for variation (particularly in the topping) making it a year round sweet with opportunity for a holiday twist only limited by your imagination in substituting the nuts for candy, sprinkles, or whatever.

    Salted Toffee Crisps

    150g Crackers (Saltines or Graham)
    250ml Butter
    250ml Dark Brown     Sugar
    500ml Chocolate, Chips (Semi Sweet)
    250ml Chopped Nuts (Cashews or Peanuts)
    5ml Sea Salt

    While you are preheating the oven to 400F you can line a baking sheet with some parchment and tile out the crackers to completely cover the base of the sheet. The butter and brown sugar go into a saucepan and combine to a boil for a minimum of three minutes. An experienced candy maker is going to jump in here and substitute some exacting time and temperatures for the right crack stage of cooking sugar, but I did this blind without a thermometer (because that’s what the internets promised me would work) and it worked just fine. After the boil, the mixture coats the crackers and the baking sheet goes into the oven for five to six minutes. A dash of salt is followed by spreading the chocolate chips on the hot toffee and smoothing it even as it melts into a decadent coating atop the still-hot candy layer. I topped with chopped peanuts, but online I saw crumbled candy canes, M&Ms and other kinds of nuts, too. Cooled, this cracks or cuts into cookie-sized pieces and (if it lasts longer than a few days) holds up in the freezer for the holidays.

    Enjoy!

  • Friday Yeast Fail

    I banked my evening post on some cast iron skillet focaccia bread. The plan was to bake a zesty round of generously seasoned pan bread, a twelve inch disc of leavened goodness, baked to perfection in the oven and sliced up for some Friday night snacking.

    I followed a simple recipe: some flour, yeast, olive oil, spices, salt, water… you know how this goes.

    Mixed, I set it all aside to rise.

    I waited.

    I watched.

    I put it into the proofing drawer of my oven.

    I waited some more.

    I think my failing was relying on store bought yeast. I would have gone the sourdough starter route, but I dreamed up this plan in the afternoon and was hoping for a Friday treat.

    The darned thing never rose.

    I turned into a cold, wet, oily ball of dough with so little going for it that six hours later I’m pretty much resigned to cooking it up and seeing what happens.

    And whatever happens will definitely not be focaccia.