SylviaH's blog

I hope I'm not the only one who does some strange experiments?  Like useing frozen pizza dough for a pate fermentee!!  I made french bread and another Daisy Ring yeasted coffee cake this time with Almond Paste filling.  They both tasted very good, lots of pleasing flavors in the both the bread and the yeasted coffee cake!

I used JH Baguettes with Pate Fermentee / tweaking the recipe to use my pizza dough!

Next time I will  need to make my Almond Paste filling a little more dryer.  I made a sourcream sugar glaze.

Delicious yeasted coffee bread I make in an assortment of flavors.  It's usually made as a straight dough recipe!

Lots of flavor in the tender crumb!

Sylvia

I love making pizza and it's done pretty often around my house..indoors and in the wfo.  So all these pizza's on TFL lately have really been giving me the craving!  I used the Neo-Neapolitan Pizza Dough recipe from PR American pie book.  I made dough with KAAP and KAB flours.  This is a recipe that makes a thin crisp crust with airy pockets in the crown.  Usually I make a thicker crust for use with heavier toppings like sausage or pepperoni and the extra cheeses and tomato that we like...but this time wanted the heavier toppings with the Thin and Crispy crust...It's a little sticky and a touch tricky to handle...as stated in the book..  Well, I've had enough practice now that it's become fun and consistant to make great tasteing pizza's.  Useing the KAAP flour makes the dough even a little more stickier...but with a little practice the dough can be shaped fast with only a little added flour on the peel!  Tonight I wanted a thin, crispy crust with extra's,...I used the AP flour dough balls out of my freezer.   I love the tomato sauce with the spices, herbs, garlic, several cheese blends, fresh garden basil, EVOO and sausage on this one pictured..the other 2 were devoured to fast to get photos.  I went pretty heavy on all the toppings and still got a great crust that stood up, crispy, crunchy and very tastey.  Also this dough was frozen and thawed.  Another plus for convenience!  One thing I do to assure the crust stays crispy is to always place it either on a paper sack..grocery bags are great...or saved cardboard.  I place the bag on top of a cutting board and slice...it then is served on paper plates...another plus for cleanup time..  If you put your pizza onto a pizza pan or a plate your going to get a soggy crust real fast.  The crust has a fantastic flavor!

Baked at 550F on 1 hour pre-heated stones indoor convection oven

Lot's of thick tomato sauce under the cheeses,  and carmelized on top of the bubbles!

Thin, Crispy, Crunchy enough to hold that piece of sausage and cheese on the tip without folding under...nice crispy, crunchy, bubble in the crown!

The dough was stretched out thin enough to see through and the crown left a little thicker..placed directly onto a lightly floured paddle after being shaped between my two palms and flipped back and forth over my wrists and gently stretched in my hands and topped and slid onto the stone and baked about 6 minutes.

Sylvia

I thought I would try D.T. DiMuzio's recipe from his book 'bread baking' for Sicilian Semolina Bread.  Everything went according to plan and the dough tested close to the goal Temperature of 77F.  Things could not have looked better...then I realized...Oh My Gosh!...I forgot to put in the Olive Oil...I knew I should have had it measured and ready to go....because if I don't have ingredients right in front of me...this happens!  I didn't even have the bottle of oil out on the counter...so much for earlier thoughts about the oil!  Oh it would probably be great even without the oil...but no...I wanted my oil.  No matter what!!  In it went.. all of it...slooooshing all around the dough...not mixing in very well ...what now!  I picked up about a Tablespoon of flour tossed it in around the dough and things seemed to come to together pretty good.  I don't think I will ever forget my oil again...lesson learned!  Things looked pretty good...other than I had a very puffy wet dough to try and form into an S...so I did the best I could and made 2 scrolls..one with a backward S and one batard.  We had several slices with dinner and we thought the flavor was great.  So good in fact I thought I would take the one S out of the frig that I was going to retard for tomorrow.  I thought I would let it proof a little longer and see if that would help the S not to get so blown away as in the first loaf.  The first two were done on a pan with added steam>my new Lava Rocks!...I would do this last loaf in my Bell Cloche and see if there was any difference.  Well, not really anything that noticable..they looked pretty much the same both even had the S pretty much blown away...I think my dough was a little on the wet side...then maybe again it was the oil being added later on made the dough slack...Any comment on this will be greatly appreciated.  This was a first forgetting to add the oil and Im sure it must affect the gluten formation some how..so any comments and advice are very much appreciated.

2 S Scrolls - One S and Batard baked with steamed oven - One S  in a La Cloche

Goal Temperature is 77F    This is when I realized I had forgotten the Oil! :>/

Olive Oil has been added and Temperature holding at 77.7   Im thinking I need these lucky numbers!

Batard was nearly all eaten! It had a very nice buttery flavor from the duram flour...we are not crazy on the seeds..but I wanted to stick with tradition and they did add a nice toasty flavor. Things had turned out better than I thought  adding the oil so late didn't seem to do to much harm.

S on the Left was Oven Steamed                                               S on Right was baked in the Bell Cloche and retarded for about 2 hrs. in the frig.

                                                                                             longer before baking.

Crumb on Batard

Sylvia

Something a little sweet for my daughter!  She loves brownies/chocolate. These small brownies are full of chocolate and sprinkled with a little expresso powder.

Terrible lighting for the photo..these really are  very dark chocolate.

M for Mandy!

More for the kids ;-D

Happy Mother's Day to all you Mom's,

Sylvia

Today I made Daniel T. DiMuzio's Olive Oil Bread and I have placed on order his new book.  Daniel and Floyd's photo's/write-up really encouraged me to bake this bread.  The bread turned out lovely.  It was very easy to make and went quite well with our Scampi Diablo Pasta dinner tonite.  I used Rosemary from my tiny new plant I picked up at the nursery the other day.  The leaves were very green, pliable and fresh.  The bread is tender and at first bite there was the lovely mellow flavor of the rosemary.  I think this bread will grill very nicely for sandwiches tomorrow....my husband wants to toast everything..I don't know about jam and rosemary!  Maybe some lemon curd on it for a snack!

I also made Jeffrey Hamelman's Pain au Levain. This is a very nice sourdough bread with a pleasing taste and crumb.

Rosemary Olive Oil Boule's

Very tender open crumb.

Front two loaves are J.H. Pain au Levain (Sourdough Bread) back loaf is Rosemany Olive Oil Bread

Pain au Levain Crumb

Sylvia

This is the first time to try this bread and first bread I have made from Bread Alone by Daniel Leader & Judith Blahnik.  I wanted a nice loaf to go with a variety of cheeses and this made a nice choice...like it says thinly sliced it makes a nice compliment to cheeses.  It's delicious, I think the grated walnuts in the dough,  plus the fact that I have access to some very fresh nuts in my area made this bread even more tastier.  The crust also has a very pleasing crunch, chew and lot's of flavor.  The crumb was pleasing and so is the color the toasted walnuts lent to it...  I was surprised at the size of the two hugh torpedo shaped loaves the formula made.  Next time I will try his formula for Pain Au Levain with Pecans and Dried Cherries, we have cherry pie so I didn't want overkill on cherries...though I do love them.

I Definately need to pitch my lame for new sharp one!!

Sylvia

It's been so long since I baked in a loaf pan.  This is just a simple recipe out of my Zo breadmachine book that I hand mixed useing 5 grain cereal mix and added some  K.A. organic white wheat and Bread Flour, reduced the yeast and added a little sourdough.  This is what I got...nice and tender sandwich loaf with a bit of fiber and a nice flavor. 

Sylvia  

Pugliese Loaves with Duram Flour from RLBeranbaum's

' the bread bible' This is my first time making this bread, crunchy crust with a nice chew to it and a great crumb flavor that only gets better on tonite's panini's..also a great dipping bread.  I love the color of the loaves and crumb from the Duram flour.  The dough is very similar to working with a wet pizza dough.  I did score with a # slash!  I had a nice oven spring.  I 3 X's the recipe and got 2 nice loaves a 1 1/2 lb and 1 lb loaf..we just about finished off the 1 lb.  the bread is light and disappears fast!  I did all the mixing by hand and used a 24 hour biga.  I'll be making this loaf again...I was very happy with the results.

Thanks to Floyd here's some photo's!  Thank you Floyd!

This is being added as one of my favorite Italian Breads!

Sylvia

Peach Daisy Ring for Easter.

This is our Easter Sweet Bread.  Glazed with homemade peach jam, almond icing dotted with slivers of fresh almonds.

Sylvia

Well it's Good Friday and time for some Hot Cross Buns and good memories!  Mom made Hot Cross Buns all year round.  They were a favorite to take on their weekly fishing trips.  Back in the 70's I gave her a recipe for them I found in my Sunset Magazine's Bread recipe book...I still have it!  Today I tweeked the recipe and added some K.A. Organic White Wheat, Brown Sugar, some very fresh veitnamese cinnamon, grated nutmeg and cloves along with my home grown citrus lemon and orange candied peels,organic currants and a little orange juice.  The cross is made with a lemon glaze.  They were basted with egg yolk just before baking...Mom would have been pleased!  They are very tasty...Oh yes, and saved one for the tradition/superstition that hanging a hot cross bun on Good Friday assures it will never mold and protects the home from fires and your breads will always rise!....We need all the protection from fires we can get here in So. Calif.  and of coarse who doesn't want their bread to rise! Ha, Ha...I have the perfect place for my bun.

I had 30 buns...29 to eat!

Very Tasty...but not as good as Mom's!  She made hers a lot bigger!

This was my husbands 'Mike' mothers little house she brought back many years ago from Mexico!  Being Irish and being somewhat superstitious...why not...I'll let you know if it molds!  ; )

 note:  His little pan of buns!