Benito's blog

I realized that I hadn’t baked a crumble topped pie in at least 3 years so I decided it was time to do a crumble pie again.  I’m using Kenji Lopez-Alt’s pastry recipe again because it is now my go to recipe.  It is a reliable way of baking a buttery yet tender pie crust every time.  Rather than cutting in butter, you make a  butter flour paste with ⅔ of the flour.  This essentially coats ⅔ of the flour with butter.  So later when water is added that flour encapsulated in butter cannot form gluten and guarantees a tender buttery crust.  I’ve posted the recipe in an earlier post so if you’re interested have a look.

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Brown Sugar Crumb

MAKES ABOUT 2 CUPS; ENOUGH TO TOP 1 (9-inch / 23-cm) PIE OR 12 (2-inch / 8-cm) MINI PIES

½ cup / 40 g rolled oats

½ cup / 62 g all-purpose flour

½ cup / 96 g packed light brown sugar

½ teaspoon ground cinnamon

¼ teaspoon fine salt

6 tablespoons / 85 g unsalted butter, melted and cooled

Put the oats in the bowl of a food processor and pulse the machine to grind the oats to the texture of coarse cornmeal. Add the flour, sugar, cinnamon, and salt and pulse the machine 5 times to combine.

Transfer the mixture to a medium bowl. Add the melted butter and blend with a fork or your fingers until the butter is incorporated and the mixture gathers into small clumps. Transfer the bowl to the refrigerator and chill the crumb for 5 to 10 minutes before topping a pie.

2 pounds / 906 g strawberries, hulled and quartered

2 teaspoons freshly squeezed lemon juice

¼ teaspoon freshly grated orange zest

½ teaspoon vanilla extract

¾ cup / 144 g granulated sugar

¼ cup / 48 g finely ground instant tapioca (see page 45)

2 tablespoons cornstarch

Follow the instructions on pages 20–23 to roll, pan, and flute the dough. Transfer the pan to the refrigerator to chill the crust while you make the crumb and filling.

Prepare the crumb as directed on page 81. Set the bowl in the refrigerator and chill the crumb while you make the filling.

Preheat the oven to 375°F (190°C). Line a rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper.

In a large bowl, toss the strawberries with the lemon juice, orange zest, and vanilla extract. Toss to combine.

Whisk the sugar, ground tapioca, and cornstarch together in a small bowl. Sprinkle the sugar mixture over the strawberries and toss to combine. The mixture may seem dry at first; let it sit 5 to 10 minutes, and the lemon and sugar will draw the juices out of the fruit. Then give the mixture another good tossing to thoroughly moisten all of the sugar and tapioca granules.

Retrieve the prepared crust and crumb from the refrigerator and set the pan on the parchment-lined baking sheet. Pour the filling into the pie shell. Top the pie with the crumb, spreading in an even layer and covering all of the fruit.

Transfer the baking sheet to the oven and bake 25 minutes, then reduce the oven temperature to 350°F (175°C) and bake 25 to 30 minutes more, or until the juices bubble up through the crumb. Tent the top with foil if the crumb or crust starts to over-brown.

Transfer the baking sheet to a wire rack and let the pie cool and set, uncovered, at room temperature, overnight (or up to 3 days) before slicing and serving with buttermilk ice cream.

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My Index of Bakes

My original plan was to test bake a bread raised by sakadane, however, that didn’t get bubbly enough to raise anything.  So plan B was baked instead.  I have a small amount of einkorn that I haven’t touched recently and thought that it would be perfect to use as a tangzhong.  It has poor gluten so gelatinizing it in a tangzhong is a perfect way to add it to a bread.  I also enjoyed a test bake of buttermilk bread that I did recently so decided on a buttermilk bread.

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Instructions

Levain

Mix the levain ingredients in a jar or pyrex container with space for at least 300% growth. 

Press down with your knuckles to create a uniform surface and to push out air.

At a temperature of 78ºF, it typically takes up to 10-12 hours for this sweet stiff levain to be at peak.

Tangzhong 

Put about 1” of water in a sauce pan set on medium high heat. In the bowl of the stand mixer stir the buttermilk and flour until blended. Then place the bowl on the sauce pan to cook the tangzhong (Bain Marie) for several minutes until well thickened, stirring regularly with a spoon or heat-resistant spatula. Theoretically it should reach 65ºC (149ºF) but I don’t find I need to measure the temperature as the tangzhong gelatinizes at this temperature.  Let cool in the bowl and then refrigerate until the next morning.

Dough

In the bowl of a stand mixer, add the milk, egg, tangzhong, salt, sugar and levain.  Mix and then break up the levain into smaller pieces.  Next add the flour and vital wheat gluten.  Mix on low speed until there is no dry flour remaining.  Once incorporated increase the speed gradually to medium.  Mix at medium until the gluten is moderately developed.  With the mixer running add the room temperature butter one pat at a time until it is fully incorporated, waiting until each pat is well incorporated before adding the next.  Continue to mix until you can  pull a good windowpane, not quite as good as a white flour because the bran will interrupt the windowpane somewhat.

Shape the dough into a tight ball, cover in the bowl and ferment for 3-4 hours at 82ºF.  There should be some rise visible at this stage.

You can next place the dough into the fridge to chill the dough for about 1.5 hours, this makes rolling the dough easier, remember if you do so the final proof will take longer.  Alternatively, you can do a cold retard in the fridge overnight.

Prepare your pans by greasing them or line with parchment paper.
Scrape the dough out onto a clean counter top. Lightly flour the bench. Transfer the dough onto the bench and divide it into four. I like to weigh them to have equal sized lobes. Shape each tightly into a boule, allow to rest 5 mins. Using a rolling pin roll each ball out and then letterfold. Turn 90* and using a rolling pin roll each out to at least 8”. Letterfold again from the sides so you have a long narrow dough. Then using a rolling pin, roll flatter but keeping the dough relatively narrow.  The reason to so this extra letterfold is that the shorter fatter rolls when placed in the pan will not touch the sides of the pan.  This allows the swirled ends to rise during final proof.  Next roll each into a tight roll with some tension. Arrange the rolls of dough inside your lined pan alternating the direction of the swirls. This should allow a greater rise during proof and in the oven.

Cover and let proof for 6-8 hours, longer time if you chilled your dough for shaping. I proof until the top of the dough comes to within 1 cm of the top edge of the pan.

Preheat the oven to 350F and brush the dough with the egg-milk wash (1 egg with 1 tsp of milk and pinch of salt).  Just prior to baking brush with the egg-milk wash again.

Bake the loaves for 50 minutes or until the internal temperature is at least 190ºF, rotating as needed to get even browning. Shield your loaf if it gets brown early in the baking process. After 50 mins remove the bread from the pan and bake a further 10 mins by placing the loaf directly in the oven on the rack with the oven turned down to 325ºF. You can brush the top of the loaf with butter if you wish at this point while the bread is still hot to keep the top crust soft.

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So with the success of my first vinegar a rose wine vinegar I decided I’d try making a fruit vinegar.  Raspberries were on sale recently and raspberry vinaigrettes are delicious so that made my decision easy.  Because I recently refreshed my 1.5 year old grape yeast water I decided I’d speed the first fermentation up by inoculating the raspberries with some about 2 tbsp of the grape yeast water.  So into a jar went the two containers of raspberries.  In a ratio of 500 g of fruit to 66 g of sugar, added sugar and enough water to cover the fruit.  You want to use a jar that will allow the fruit to rise quite a bit as they ferment.  I didn’t do this and lost a fair amount of the raspberry water initially until I transferred half of the raspberries and water into a new jar.

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Within a day or two you will have vigorous fermentation of the sugars into ethanol by the wild yeast.

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Next, swirl this daily until the fruit is no longer floating and bubbling, this indicates that the first fermentation is complete.  Another indication that this first stage is complete is that the water is clear.  Apparently for apple vinegar the water will never be clear so you cannot use that indicator as a sign of the completion of this stage.

The fruit solids are strained out and now the jar of raspberry wine is left to spontaneously start the second fermentation of ethanol to acetic acid.  This is an aerobic fermentation so you must allow the water to be exposed to air for this to occur.  I covered the jar with gauze kept in place by a rubber band.  The Acetobacter needed to ferment is naturally in the fruit so it is already there in the raspberry wine so this should start on its own.  If I had enough vinegar mother I could speed this up by placing the mother into this jar, however, I don’t have a mature vinegar mother yet so I’ll have to wait and see if this second fermentation will start on its own.

The pH today is 3.5 and the target is 2.8.

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My index of bakes

I’ve had orange poppyseed in the back of my mind for quite some time and finally got around to trying it in this 100% whole stoneground spelt sourdough bread.

Whole stoneground spelt 453 g sifted yielding
47 g of bran scalded with 94 g of boiling water and left overnight in the fridge.
VWG 23.55 g
Water 341 g water and 15 g for bassinage
Salt 10.47 g
50 g of poppyseeds
Zest of 1 small-med orange

Overnight levain
16 g starter + 16 g brown sugar + 25 g water + 47 g whole spelt

In the morning breakdown the levain in the water. Add salt and dissolve. Add all the sifted spelt and VWG and mix until there is no dry flour. Rest for 10-15 mins. Do French Folds until good gluten development. Add bassinage water and incorporate. Add poppyseeds and orange zest. Stretch and fold until well incorporated. Do a bench letterfold and place dough in a bowl in the proofing box at 82°F.

Do coil folds every 30 mins stopping when the dough is strong and doesn’t really spread. Four coil folds were done. Allow to rest until 40% growth.
Shape and place in a banneton and allow to rise to 60% growth.

Preheat the oven to 500°F and place the dough in the freezer to firm it up for scoring. Place cast iron skillet in the oven. 30 mins later fill a metal loaf pan with a towel with boiling water and place in the oven to pre steam the oven.

When the oven reached 500°F flip the dough onto a sheet of parchment paper. Brush off rice flour and score. Brush water onto the dough. Transfer the dough to the peel and load into the oven onto the baking steel. Drop the temperature to 450°F and pour 1 cup of boiling water into the cast iron skillet. Bake with steam for 25 mins. After 25 mins vent the oven removing the pan and the skillet. Drop the temperature to 420°F and baking for 20-25 mins turning as needed.

When I went to the local sake distillery to get more Koji rice for my various fermentation projects using aspergillus oryzae I noticed that they also sold sake kasu. For those unfamiliar sake kasu are the lees remaining after sake production. The Japanese do not like to waste useable food products so sake kasu can be used to make many things. In fact, I used the sake kasu in this test bake to see if I could use it to build a levain to bake a loaf of bread. I think I had some success with this. I will need to adjust the recipe but to give you an idea of what I did I’ll share the outline.

Using sake kasu:water:bread flour in a 1:1:1 ratio I created a first build levain, Unfortunately I did not have a small jar and didn’t think to use a small water glass to ferment this in. As a result I couldn’t tell if it grew, even after 24 hours at 82°F. Despite the apparent lack of growth I went on and make a second build of a levain using all the first build at a 1:2:2 ratio. Surprisingly after 8 hour it almost quadrupled.

Using an all bread flour SD Hokkaido milk bread as the general guide I made a tangzhong using buttermilk. After this cooled I mixed all the levain with all the tangzhong, more buttermilk, salt and sugar. I then added the bread flour and used the stand mixer to develop the dough moderately. I then added the butter in small pats until fully incorporated and with great gluten development. The dough was left to ferment at 82°F for hour hours. At that point in time there was barely 10% rise. I had expected it to ferment more quickly but I supposed the enrichments slowed it down. Into the fridge it went for the night.

In the morning I removed the dough from the fridge and allowed it to ferment at 82°F until it reached 20% rise at which point in time it was pre shaped, shaped and then placed in a buttered cube pan. Again it was allowed to ferment until it reached less than 1 cm of the top of the pan this was a 120% rise overall. It was given an egg milk wash and baked.

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My index of bakes.

In my earlier blog post I described how I made my first ever amazake from scratch.  It is delicious, rich and sweet despite there being no added sugar.  Today I am doing a test bake of an Amazake Sourdough Vegan Hokkaido Milk Bread.  The amazake was used to make the tangzhong.  Because it is so sweet I didn’t add any sugar to the dough as I usually would.  I’m hoping that I have enough dough to fill the 10x10x10cm pullman pan I have and that it’ll bake up into a nice cube.

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Instructions

Levain

Mix the levain ingredients in a jar or pyrex container with space for at least 300% growth. 

Press down with your knuckles or silicone spatula to create a uniform surface and to push out air.

At a temperature of 78ºF, it typically takes up to 10-12 hours for this sweet stiff levain to be at peak.  For my starter I typically see 3-3.5 times increase in size at peak.  The levain will smell sweet with only a mild tang.

Tangzhong 

Put about 1” of water in a sauce pan set on medium high heat. In the bowl of the stand mixer stir the amazake and flour until blended. Then place the bowl on the sauce pan to cook the tangzhong (Bain Marie) for several minutes until well thickened, stirring regularly with a spoon or heat-resistant spatula. Theoretically it should reach 65ºC (149ºF) but I don’t find I need to measure the temperature as the tangzhong gelatinizes at this temperature.  Let cool in the bowl and then refrigerate until the next morning.

Flax seed gel

Grind 1 tbsp of flax seeds and combine with 2-3 tbsp of water and stir to form a thick gel.

Dough

Into the bowl of a stand mixer with the tangzhong, add the soy milk (consider holding back 10 g of soy milk and adding later if this is the first time you’re making this), ground flax seed gel, salt, and levain.  Mix and then break up the levain into many smaller pieces.  Next add the flour.  I like to use my spatula to mix until there aren’t many dry areas.  Allow the flour to hydrate (fermentolyse) for 20-30 minutes.  Mix on low speed and then medium speed until moderate gluten development this may take 5-10 mins.  You may want to scrape the sides of the bowl during the first 5 minutes of mixing.  Next drizzle in the toasted walnut oil a little at a time.  Slow the mixer down to avoid splashing the oil at you. The dough may come apart, be patient, continue to mix until it comes together before drizzling in more oil.  Once all the oil has been added and incorporated increase the speed gradually to medium.  Mix at medium speed until the gluten is well developed, approximately 10 mins.  You will want to check gluten development by windowpane during this time and stop mixing when you get a good windowpane.  You should be able to pull a good windowpane, not quite as good as a white flour because the bran will interrupt the windowpane somewhat. 

On the counter, shape the dough into a tight ball, cover in the bowl and ferment for 4-4.5 hours at 82ºF.  There should be some rise visible at this stage.

You can next place the dough into the fridge to chill the dough for about 1.5 hours, this makes rolling the dough easier to shape.  Remember, if you do so the final proof will take longer.  Alternatively, you can do a cold retard in the fridge overnight, however, you may find that this increases the tang in your bread.

Prepare your pans by greasing them or line with parchment paper.  I used a muffin pan oiled with walnut oil.

Lightly flour the top of the dough. Scrape the dough out onto a clean counter top and divide it into six. I like to weigh them to have equal sized bun. Shape each tightly into a boule, allow to rest 5 mins. Flatten each boule, divide it into three pieces shaping each into a small boule.  Place each set of three small boules into the muffin tin to bake into a three lobed bun.

Cover and let proof for 3-5 hours at a warm temperature.  I proof at 82°F.  You will need longer than 3-5 hours if you chilled your dough for shaping. I proof until the top of the dough comes to within 1 cm of the top edge of the pan.

Preheat the oven to 350°F.  

Bake 20 mins lid on then remove lid and bake further 10-15 mins.

pH of the dough after mixing completed was 5.52.  

pH of the dough at the time of baking was 5.02 with a 100% rise.

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I’m guessing that I’ll need to make an additional 50-75 g of dough to properly fill this pullman cube pan when baked with the lid on.  Not bad for a first time baking with the new cube pan though.  I’ll post the crumb and flavour later when the bread cools.

I recently dropped into our local sake maker and picked up another package of koji rice.  My plan was to make my third batch of homemade miso since our first one is disappearing quickly and the second one is just over a month into its fermentation which will take a fully year or so.  However, I borrowed the book Koji Alchemy and have been reading through it and I’m finding it so fascinating and it is giving me some other ideas for my koji rice.

The first thing I decided to try making is amazake.  I’d never drank this before but it is popular in Japan.  Despite the fact that it is just koji rice, cooked rice and water 1:1:2 it is super sweet and umami.  Aspergillus oryzae is the mold that lives in koji rice, and much of it usefulness stems from the massive amounts of both amylases and proteases that it produces.  Foods that are fermented by koji rice will be sweeter and more umami rich because of the action of these enzymes.  Glutamate is well known as the amino acid that is the primary factor that gives food that umami deliciousness.  It is because of the proteases that glutamate is released from foods in large amounts, it is what gives miso and soy sauce that awesome delicious flavour. 

Amazake is not fermented so in making it unlike the miso, we are not trying to grow the aspergillus oryzae but instead we are relying on the enzymes already present from the aspergillus in the koji to break down the starch and protein in the rice to make the amazake sweet and yummy.  I used my Instant Pot set to Keep Warm, Less placing a couple of inches of water in the pot and then placing the jam jar with the koji rice, cooked rice and water in the water bath.  This setting at most stays on for 10 hours, so I had to run it twice, once at 4 hours and once at 10 hours to get the full effect.

This morning I took the jar of amazake out of the Instant Pot and stirred it well to break down the rice and tasted it.  It was shocking how sweet it is without any added sugar.  Wow such delicious interesting thing this amazake.  So the main reason I wanted to make it was to play with the koji rice I had but then I also had a plan for bread of course.  I am using this amazake to prepare a Tangzhong for my vegan version of the sourdough Hokkaido milk bread.  Because it is so sweet I didn’t need to add any sugar to the dough.  So we shall see if the resulting bread it too sweet for my liking.  Having tasted it, I wonder how it would work to make a stiff sweet levain!!

I’ll posted about my first test bake with my amazake in another blog post.

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I’ve been baking a lot of milk breads for some time developing the formula to the point that I’m quite happy with it.  So now I’d like to see what I can do with a vegan version of a sourdough milk bread.  This is my first try at a vegan version of a 100% whole wheat milk bread.  My favourite non dairy milk is soy milk and I prefer the Asian soy milk rather than the North American ones as they are slightly sweetened without any added flavours like vanilla so it was easy to decide to use this.  I have a bottle of toasted walnut oil that I use when I make bread with walnuts in it to amp up the walnut flavour so I decided that I would replace the oil from the butter and the egg yolk with the equivalent amount of toasted walnut oil.  Finally for the egg yolks I decided to use ground flax seeds with water.  I initially planned to use aquafaba (chickpea water) however, I realized when my first test dough wasn’t rising that the can of chickpeas I used had a good amount of salt added that I hadn’t accounted for in the dough.  The high salt appeared to inhibit the microbes and there was very little rise over quite a long time so that first dough was binned.

Based on the information I could find 1 egg about 11% fat and the egg white is about equal to 1 tbsp of flax seeds ground and mixed with 2-3 tbsp of water. 

Butter in North America is about 80% fat.

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Instructions
Levain
Mix the levain ingredients in a jar or pyrex container with space for at least 300% growth.
Press down with your knuckles or silicone spatula to create a uniform surface and to push out air.
At a temperature of 78ºF, it typically takes up to 10-12 hours for this sweet stiff levain to be at peak. For my starter I typically see 3-3.5 times increase in size at peak. The levain will smell sweet with only a mild tang.
Tangzhong
Put about 1” of water sauce pan set on medium high heat. In the bowl of the stand mixer stir the milk and flour until blended. Then place the bowl on the sauce pan to cook the tangzhong (Bain Marie) for several minutes until well thickened, stirring regularly with a spoon or heat-resistant spatula. Theoretically it should reach 65ºC (149ºF) but I don’t find I need to measure the temperature as the tangzhong gelatinizes at this temperature. Let cool in the bowl and then refrigerate until the next morning.

Flax seed gel
Grind 1 tbsp of flax seeds and combine with 2-3 tbsp of water and stir to form a thick gel.

Cornstarch glaze
Combine ¼ tsp of corn starch and ¼ cup of water in a measuring cup and stir to dissolve. Microwave for 20-40 seconds in pulses until the cornstarch glaze thickens.

Dough
Into the bowl of a stand mixer with the tangzhong, add the soy milk (consider holding back 10 g of soy milk and adding later if this is the first time you’re making this), ground flax seed gel, salt, diastatic malt (optional) and levain. Mix and then break up the levain into many smaller pieces. Next add the flour. I like to use my spatula to mix until there aren’t many dry areas. Allow the flour to hydrate (fermentolyse) for 20-30 minutes. Mix on low speed and then medium speed until moderate gluten development this may take 5-10 mins. You may want to scrape the sides of the bowl during the first 5 minutes of mixing. Next drizzle in the toasted walnut oil a little at a time. Slow the mixer down to avoid splashing the oil at you. The dough may come apart, be patient, continue to mix until it comes together before drizzling in more oil. Once all the oil has been added and incorporated increase the speed gradually to medium. Mix at medium speed until the gluten is well developed, approximately 10 mins. You will want to check gluten development by windowpane during this time and stop mixing when you get a good windowpane. You should be able to pull a good windowpane, not quite as good as a white flour because the bran will interrupt the windowpane somewhat.

On the counter, shape the dough into a tight ball, cover in the bowl and ferment for 4-4.5 hours at 82ºF. There should be some rise visible at this stage.

You can next place the dough into the fridge to chill the dough for about 1.5 hours, this makes rolling the dough easier to shape. Remember, if you do so the final proof will take longer. Alternatively, you can do a cold retard in the fridge overnight, however, you may find that this increases the tang in your bread.

Prepare your pans by greasing them or line with parchment paper. I used a muffin pan oiled with walnut oil.

Lightly flour the top of the dough. Scrape the dough out onto a clean counter top and divide it into six. I like to weigh them to have equal sized bun. Shape each tightly into a boule, allow to rest 5 mins. Flatten each boule, divide it into three pieces shaping each into a small boule. Place each set of three small boules into the muffin tin to bake into a three lobed bun.

Cover and let proof for 3-5 hours at a warm temperature. I proof at 82°F. You will need longer than 3-5 hours if you chilled your dough for shaping. I proof until the top of the dough comes to within 1 cm of the top edge of the pan.

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Prepare your cornstarch glaze.

Bake 30-35 mins for rolls.

Apply cornstarch glaze when the bread is done, then place back in oven for just 1 minute.

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One change I would make next time other than adjust the timing which wasn’t great (I shaped far too early because I had to get out of the house) is that I would slightly reduce the milk by 5% or so as the dough was difficult to shape due to stickiness.  I wonder if the stickiness is in part from the flax seed gel used to replace the egg white.  I’d be curious to try this again going with my initial plan for aquafaba, but using a no salt added can of chickpeas.

In the end, these were delicious and had a great amount of nutty flavour.  It is impossible in my mind to replace the flavour from dairy fat, but these are delicious in their own way and much healthier using walnut oil, soy milk and flax seeds.  Someone might ask why I didn’t use vegan butter, the ones I looked at often had unhealthy fats in them such as coconut oil so I figured if I was going to make a vegan version of a milk bread it should be healthier if I was going to skip the dairy.  

My index of bakes

My sourdough Hokkaido milk bread dough is highly versatile, here is a 50% whole wheat version that I’ve spiced with cinnamon, allspice and nutmeg and added mixed candied peel and currants. These are soft, fluffy and not too sweet, they’ll be perfect for breakfast on the long weekend.  This formula uses a stiff sweet levain once again to avoid a sour tang to the bread.  The final pH measured from the baked bun is 5.02 which is remarkable especially considering the 20 hour long cold retard the dough received.

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Flour paste - mix as you preheat the oven
20 g lemon juice
50 g bread flour
1 tbsp sugar
60 g water

Instructions
Levain
Mix the levain ingredients in a jar or pyrex container with space for at least 300% growth.
Press down with your knuckles or silicone spatula to create a uniform surface and to push out air.
At a temperature of 78ºF, it typically takes up to 10-12 hours for this sweet stiff levain to be at peak. For my starter I typically see 3-3.5 times increase in size at peak. The levain will smell sweet with only a mild tang.
Tangzhong
In a sauce pan set on medium heat, stir the milk and flour until blended. Then cook for several minutes until well thickened, stirring regularly with a spoon or heat-resistant spatula. Let cool in the pan or, for faster results, in a new bowl. Theoretically it should reach 65ºC (149ºF) but I don’t find I need to measure the temperature as the tangzhong gelatinizes at this temperature. You can prepare this the night before and refrigerate it, ensure that it is covered \to prevent it from drying out.

Dough
Prepare the dried fruit (currants, raisins or blueberries) mist them with water then microwave for 15-30 secs. This will quickly plump them up without them later adding more hydration to your dough.

In the bowl of a stand mixer, add the milk (consider holding back 20 g of milk and adding later if this is the first time you’re making this), egg, tangzhong, salt, sugar, diastatic malt, zest and levain. Mix and then break up the levain into many smaller pieces. Next add the flour and vital wheat gluten. I like to use my spatula to mix until there aren’t many dry areas. Allow the flour to hydrate (fermentolyse) for 20-30 minutes. Mix on low speed and then medium speed until moderate gluten development this may take 5-10 mins. You may want to scrape the sides of the bowl during the first 5 minutes of mixing. Next drizzle in the melted butter a little at a time, or alternatively add room temperature butter one pat at a time. Slow the mixer down to avoid splashing the butter at you. The dough may come apart, be patient, continue to mix until it comes together before drizzling or adding in more butter. Once all the butter has been added and incorporated add mixed peel and dried fruit and continue to mix until well incorporated. Increase the speed gradually to medium. Mix at medium speed until the gluten is well developed, approximately 10 mins. You will want to check gluten development by windowpane during this time and stop mixing when you get a good windowpane. You should be able to pull a good windowpane, not quite as good as a white flour because the bran will interrupt the windowpane somewhat.

On the counter, shape the dough into a tight ball, cover in the bowl and ferment for 4-5 hours at 82ºF. There should be some rise visible at this stage.

You can next place the dough into the fridge to chill the dough for about 1.5 hours or overnight (but expect there to be a bit of sour tang if you do a cold retard), this makes rolling the dough easier to shape. Remember, if you do so the final proof will take longer. Alternatively, you can do a cold retard in the fridge overnight, however, you may find that this increases the tang in your bread.

Prepare your pan by greasing it or line with parchment paper. Lightly dust the top of the dough with flour and using a bowl scraper remove the dough from the bowl placing it on the counter. Next divide the dough into 9 equal pieces and shape each into a tight boule. Place each boule into the prepared 9” x 9” pan. Cover and start final proof at 82°F for 2-3 hours, the dough will start to almost fill the pan when final proof is complete and will pass the finger poke test.

About 30 mins before ready to bake brush your egg-milk wash onto the buns. Repeat this just before they go into the oven. Do this if using the lemon drizzle icing. If using the flour paste there is no need.

Bake

Preheat your oven, with a rack in the lower half, to 350°F (175°C). You should aim to start preheating your oven about 30-40 mins prior to the dough being full proofed. Once your oven is preheated, remove your pan from its bag, and apply the paste in a cross pattern on the buns. Slide it into the oven, and bake for 30 to 35 minutes.

The rolls are finished baking when the tops are well-colored and the internal temperature is around 195°F (90°C). Remove the rolls from the oven and let the rolls cool completely before piping on the lemon icing crosses otherwise the icing will melt if using icing cross. If using flour paste then heat apricot jam in the microwave and brush on the warm buns until they are nicely glazed and shiny.

When I eventually make these again I would use the flour paste piped on a bit more narrowly and then use an egg wash instead of the apricot jam.

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I have a bottle of wine that isn’t my favourite so decided I’d try to make vinegar from it as a fun experiment.  Started on March 28/22.

The easiest method of making vinegar from wine is by using unpasteurized apple cider vinegar which has the mother in it.  Apparently it is Acetobacteraceae that metabolizes alcohol into acetic acid in an aerobic reaction.  If one uses unpasteurized apple cider vinegar the mother should be alive and well.  By adding this to the wine the Acetobacteraceae will convert the ethanol into acetic acid.  

I read a bunch of blogs that said you must use sulfite free wine.  The problem is that sulfites are apparently a natural part of the wine production even when they aren’t added to the wine so there isn’t really sulfite free wines.  However, using a wine low in sulfites, one to which no sulfites were added is apparently beneficial.  

Another factor is the alcohol content of the wine, if it is much above 8% then adding the mother to the wine may not work because over 8% the acetobacteraceae may not be able to function.  Since most wines are higher than 8% what one can do is blend the apple cider vinegar to the wine in a ratio that ensures that the alcohol is no higher than 8%.  

So with in mind I mixed the wine and the apple cider vinegar in a 1:1 ratio in two mason jars.  In order to provide the aerobic environment I placed medical gauze over the tops of each jar and then secured it with the lid without the center in place so the wine/vinegar could breathe.  This seems to be working because there is now a layer at the top of the liquid which I assume is the new growing mother and the mixture is starting to smell really good of vinegar.

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Index of bakes