80 Percent Sourdough Rye with a Rye-flour Soaker

It's my first time to bake rye sourdough that's over 40 percent rye. I don't know how it tastes like or when proofing is done. So I just followed the book by hamelman.

The result was not that good. After 24 hours, I cut a few slices and tasted it. Dry. It was really dry like stale bread, especially outside crust.

Look at this photo closely. Inside of the slice looks more moist and outside dry. I don't know why it is. Did I bake it long? Or it is just what rye bread is? If I toast it, it will be edible. But I will not make dense rye bread anymore.

 

sourdough 16 hours

mixing 6 minutes (dough temperature 28℃)

bulk fermentation 30 minutes

final fermentation 60 minutes

baking with steam, 240℃ 10 minutes

without steam, 220℃ 25 minutes

Mint Chocolate Cupcakes

 

The weather is getting cool. Last night, I took out a blanket full with cotton. Not even august has passed yet. When the sun goes down, cool wind blows gently. As the night goes on, it becomes slightly cold. It's like autumn is coming. And actually, I like it.

 

The flavor of mint is so refreshing and cool, also, it goes very well with chocolate. Mint chocolate icecream is one my favorites, but today I made chocolate cupcakes with mint buttercream.

For cupcake batter, I used chocolate genoise which contains less fat and sugar but more eggs than regular cupcake batter. They are very fluffy to be fitted in paper muffin cups, so it's difficult to maintain shape. But I like this soft and light cakes better than heavy cakes.

For richness, there are buttercream on top of the cake, flavored with mint extract and dark chocolate shavings for more chocolate flavor. I will receive autumn with this small and cool cupcakes to welcome.

 

MINT CHOCOLATE CUPCAKES

 

yields 6 cupcakes

 

Ingredients

 

for chocolate cupcakes

 

2 eggs

sugar 54g

a pinch of salt

cake flour 33g

cocoa powder 12g

butter, melted 15g

milk 5g

vanilla extract 1/4tsp

 

for mint butter cream

 

egg white 37g

water 17g

sugar 57g

butter 150g

mint extract

food coloring

 

grated dark chocolate

 

Instructions

 

To make chocolate cupcakes, combine eggs, sugar and salt in a heat-proof bowl. Place it over simmering water and whisk constantly with a balloon whisk to heat the mixture until warm.

Remove from heat. With electric hand mixer or stand mixer, beat on medium-high speed for 5 minutes until pale in color.

Sift in cake flour and cocoa powder, mix until well combined, but be careful not to deflate the batter.

Add melted butter, milk and vanilla to the batter, combine well.

Put it in a muffin pan using icecream scoop or spoon.

Bake in 180℃ oven for 14 minutes. Remove from the pan when it's our of the oven. Cool completely.

This mint butter cream contains italian meringue. Add sugar and water in a saucepan, bring it to 117℃.

Meanwhile, whip egg white with electric hand mixer or stand mixer until soft peak. Add hot sugar syrup into the meringue while whipping. Continue whipping until it cools down to room temperature.

While whipping, add soft diced butter little by little to the meringue and whip until it reaches full volume.

Add mint extract and food coloring as you like.

Pipe onto the cupcakes and sprinkle grated dark chocolate.

English Muffins

English muffins are originally baked in  a skillet but I baked in the oven. Nice, regular shape and more easy to make than in a skillet.

Dusted with cornmeal, crisp on the outside, soft in the inside. English muffins are great when it's freshly made. Split in half, spread butter or place cheese. Heaven, indeed.

 

ENGLISH MUFFINS

 

yields 12 muffins

 

Ingredients

 

bread flour 400g

sugar 4g

instant dried yeast 4g

salt 4g

butter 4g

water 280g

cornmeal for dusting

 

Instructions

 

Add all ingredients in a mixing bowl, combine to make a sticky ball. Move it on the counter and knead for 7 to 8 minutes. It will be smooth and elastic. Place it in a bowl, cover with plastic and proof for 1 hour or until doubled in size.

Divide the dough into 12 pieces, make a round ball, bench rest for 15 minutes.

Make ball again, coat with cornmeal generously. Place it on a baking sheet. Cover with plastic and proof until doubled in size.

Preheat the oven to 200℃. Place a pan over proofed muffins to flatten and bake for 13 minutes.

After 10 minutes baking, remove upper pan and bake another 3 minutes until brown.

CHOUX PASTRY WITH GREEN TEA DIPLOMAT CREAM

 

Cream puff is one of my favorite desserts that I have loved since very young. Before I started baking as my hobby, I used to buy cream puffs at nearby bakery. That was an easy way to eat plenty of cream unless I bought cream cake. Eating cream puff one at a time, I was in heaven. And now, I make fresh, crisp choux pastry and soft, rich cream at my home.

 

 

Choux pastry should be baked on lowest oven rack. It has more volume and lovely shape. I realized this as I baked two sheet of pastry in different place of the oven. To get the finest quality, you have to make the batter properly. It's easy once you got the point.

 

 

A good thing about baking at home is you can make anything as you like. I love the combination of pastry cream and heavy cream in the proportion of 3:1. In this ratio, you can taste flavor and creaminess together. It's much more good than to use only heavy cream or pastry cream. For flavor, I added green tea this time.

In the desserts that contain green tea as flavoring, too much green tea is undesirable, you may taste something like grass not the one you want from your desserts. So don't add too much of green tea. I added a little bit more than I needed to get more vivid color. It wasn't that bad, but I will decrease the amount of green tea a little.

 

CHOUX PASTRY WITH GREEN TEA DIPLOMAT CREAM

 

yields 20 choux pastry and cream for 9 choux

 

Ingredients

 

for choux pastry

 

water 100g

butter 60g

a pinch of salt

cake flour 60g

2 to 3 eggs

 

for green tea pastry cream

 

milk 300g

egg yolk 60g

sugar 75g

cake flour 12g

cornstrach 9g

a pinch of salt

green tea powder 1Tbsp + 1tsp (10g)

 

for diplomat cream

 

green tea pastry cream

heavy cream 100g

sugar 7g

 

Instructions

 

To make choux pastry, add water, butter and salt to saucepan, bring it to a boil to melt butter. When butter is melted and water is boiling, reduce the heat and sift in cake flour and stir to moisten all flour.

On medium heat , cook the batter for 1 to 2 minutes stirring constantly with wooden spoon. Transfer batter to bowl and cool for 5 minutes.

Crack 3 eggs in a bowl and beat with a fork. Add eggs little by little to the batter, blend in with balloon whisk. The amount of eggs you adds is different on each occasion. The batter should be thick and smooth and will fall from a spoon in v-shape.

Pipe the dough onto the baking sheet, spacing about 5cm apart. Spray the dough with mister to help the pastry puff up.

Bake in 200℃  the lowest rack of the oven for 15 minutes then reduce the temperature to 180℃ and continue to bake for 15 minutes more until golden brown. Cool on a wire rack.

To make green tea pastry cream, bring milk to a boil in a saucepan, add sifted green tea powder stir well.

In a bowl, add egg yolk, sugar and salt mix with balloon whisk until pale. Add hot milk little by little to the egg mixture then transfer back to the saucepan.

On medium heat, cook it until it's thickened. Pour the cream to a sifter to make it smooth. Cover with plastic, let it touch the surface of the cream to prevent forming skin. Cool completely.

To make diplomat cream, beat in heavy cream and sugar until firm. Stir pastry cream with balloon whisk to make it smooth. Add heavy cream to pastry cream in 2 addition.

To assemble, make a hole in the bottom of the choux and pipe in cream fully. Dust with powdered sugar and put it in a refrigerator. When it's cool, enjoy the delightful desserts.

 

OLIVE LEVAIN

Olive levain is full of rich olives. In every bite, you can taste the olive and slightly sour crumb with, of course, flavorful crust. My scoring was not great but the oven spring was immense, almost doubled in height.

Next time I bake sourdough, I will try steaming method. Because my oven is too small, I can't put 2 sheef pans in my oven to steam. By this time, I just sprayed the wall of the oven with mister. I don't think it helps the dough since lots of heat is escaping from the oven while I'm spraying. Next time it will be much better.

 

OLIVE LEVAIN

 

from 'BREAD' by jeffrey hamelman

 

yields 1 round loaf

 

Ingredients

 

for liquid-levain

 

bread flour 41g

water 51g

levain 8g (I used 70% hydration white levain)

 

for final dough

 

bread flour 180g

whole-wheat flour 25g

water 101g

salt 3g

liquid-levain 101g

olives, pitted and drained 62g

 

Instructions

 

To make liquid-levain, combine bread flour, water and levain together, cover with plastic and let stand on the counter until bubbly.

To make the final dough, mix all ingredients except for olives. Knead for 6 minutes then add olive and combine well. Cover with plastic and let if proof for 3 to 4 hours. Fold once or twice while proofing. You should adjust proofing time since temperature and the activity of levain is different with each other.

After the dough has proofed well, make a round boll shped and place it in the banneton or something like that. I used deep saucepan covered with floured cloth. Place it in the refrigerator for 12 hours or 1 hour before you bake. It should be doubled in size.

Preheat the oven to 240℃ with a baking pan in the oven. Score the dough and bake in the oven for 30 minutes. Let it cool at least 1 hour before slicing.

PORTUGUESE EGG TARTS

Egg tart is a combination of pastry and custard. Especially, portuguese egg tart consists of custard in a puff pastry. It's well known for caramelized surface. Today I made puff pastry for this tart being lucky with cool weather. It came out perfect. Nice layers of butter did the job. So creamy, so relaxing they are.

 

 

PORTUGUESE EGG TARTS

 

yields 21 small tarts + 6 medium-sized tarts

 

 

Ingredients

 

for puff pastry

 

cake flour 100g

bread flour 100g

water 100g

salt 4g

butter 20g

roll-in butter 120g

 

for filling

 

heavy cream 90g

sugar 90g

3 egg yolk(50g)

constarch 1.5Tbsp

milk 390g

salt 1/4tsp

vanilla extract 1/2tsp

 

 

Instructions

 

First, you should make dough for puff pastry. Combine both flour and 20g butter until crumble-like. Dissolve salt in water and add to the flour mixture. Lightly knead until all flour is hydrated. Place the dough in the refrigrator for 30 minutes. Meanwhile, place 120g butter in a zip lock bag and make square butter. Put it in the refrigerator.

When the dough has chilled sufficiently, roll it out to about 20cm-square. Place butter in center and cover with the dough. Roll out to 3 times lengthwise. Fold into 3. Place it in the freezer for 20 minutes. Turn the dough 90-degrees and repeat the process 2 more times. 3 fold 3 times.

Roll out the dough and cut using round-shped cookie cutter. Place it in the medium or small sized muffin pan. Press firmly with your finger. When it's done put it in the refrigerator or freezer until chilled.

To make the filling, combine all ingredients besides vanilla in a saucepan, on medium heat, stir the mixture constantly until thickened. Cool in ice water until completely chilled. Then add vanilla, stir well.

Preheat the oven to 220℃ and place the oven rack to medium-high. Pour the filling into pastry and bake for 25 minutes(for small tarts) or 35 minutes(for medium-sized tarts). After half of the baking time, reduce the oven temperature to 200℃. When it's done, cool for 10 minutes and carefully remove the tarts from the pan. Enjoy either warm or cool, really whenever.

CHOCOLATE CAKE ROLL

 

Cake rolls for two days in a low! Last time, I made green tea cake roll. There was a problem with it. In next day I made it, cream tastes greasy even though the cream was 100% milk cream. I thought it might be the problem of heavy cream itself. So I changed the brand and made this roll with that cream.

 

 
 The chocolate flavor of this cake comes from wholly cocoa powder. So use good-quality cocoa powder. The cake contains more cocoa powder than flour. Soft and moist it just melts down in mouth.

 

 

CHOCOLATE CAKE ROLL

 

yields 1 roll using 33 * 26 *1 cm sheet pan

 

 

Ingredients

 

eggs 135g

sugar 80g

cocoa powder 22g

cake flour 16g

milk 16g

a pinch of salt

 

heavy cream 150g

sugar 10g

rum 1/4tsp

 

Instructions

 

Line the baking pan with parchment paper and preheat the oven to 190℃.

Sift cocoa powder and cake flour together. Set aside.

Combine eggs and sugar in the heat-proof bowl. Bring water to a simmer in a medium saucepan. Place the bowl over the saucepan. Stir constantly with a balloon whisk until the mixture is warm to touch. Remove from heat and with hand mixer or electric mixer beat on medium speed for 5 minutes until pale and thick. Beat 1 minute more on low speed to arrange the air bubbles.

Sift flour mixture over the egg mixture and gently fold in using a rubber spatula.

When all the flour is mixed in, add milk and rum to the batter. Mix until well combined.

Pour the batter into the pan. Spread evenly with scraper. Tap on the counter 2 to 3 times to remove big air bubbles. Put it in the oven and bake for about 11 minutes. When it's done, slide the cake on the clean towel. Cool completely.

Mix heavy cream with sugar. Over a bowl with lots of ice, beat with hand mixer on low speed until thick. Then I beat with the balloon whisk for 3 minutes more. You can beat all the way through with hand or electric mixer but I prefer finishing with my hands. Add rum and beat until firm.

Remove the parchment paper of the cake. Choose which side you will take for the outside. Place the cake on the parchment paper and spread cream evenly.

Roll the cake tightly. Refrigerate for 1 hour or until set before slicing.
Slice with sharp knife and enjoy.

SAUSAGE PIZZA WITH THE BEST PIZZA DOUGH

 

It's the first time to bake pizza at home with my small oven. I found pizza dough recipe using biga from 'BREAD'. Because it's my first time to bake pizza, I can't be sure if there is more good pizza dough than this. But probably I will not change the dough recipe. This one is the best.

 

For topping, I chose onion, red and yellow paprika, sausage, mozzarella and Colby & Monterey Jack marble cheese. After baked in the oven for about 20 minutes, The cheese is melted perfectly. Crust is crisp and chewy. It's not like all those pizzas I tried. What's important in pizza is not the topping but dough. True, True, True. I feel it in my mouth.

 

THE BEST PIZZA DOUGH

 

from Bread by jeffrey hamelman

 

yields 2 pizza dough

 

Ingredients

 

for biga

 

bread flour 52g

water 31g

pinch of instant dried yeast

 

for final dough

 

bread flour 206g

water 144g

salt 4g

instant dried yeast 3g

olive oil 13g

biga 83g

 

Instructions

 

For biga, mix all the ingredients until all flour is hydrated. It's stiff dough. Cover the bowl with plastic and proof until almost doubled. I added a pinch of salt which is for the final dough to slow down the proofing speed.(It's too hot thesedays.)

To make the final dough, mix all ingredients except for olive oil. Knead for 3 minutes then add olive oil and knead for 3 minutes more. It's soft and not sticky dough. Cover the bowl with plastic and proof until doubled in size.

Devide the dough into 2 pieces. Round the dough and let it sit on the counter for 20 minutes. If not using the dough right away you can place it in the oiled plastic bag and place it in refrigerator for 2 to 3 days.

When the dough is relaxed nicely, strech the dough with your hands until it reaches desired size. Place it on the floured surface and top it with whatever you like.

Bake in the nicely hot 240℃ oven for 15 to 20 minutes and don't forget to place a baking pan or baking stone in the oven while preheating.

Enjoy the best pizza you made.

 



WHOLE-WHEAT LEVAIN

 

I bought the book 'BREAD' by jeffrey hamelman. I already have the bread book 'The Bread Baker's Apprentice' by peter reinhart. It's a great book but I needed more deep explanation about scoring, folding, shaping something like these. Searching Amazon for the most useful, awesome book, I found 'Bread'. Although this book doesn't contain many photos, the explanation is detailed and lots of recipes are in here.

 

Whole-wheat Levain is one of the recipes in this book. It has liquid levain made like poolish. The levain I had was 70% hydration. I just used this instead of the liquid culture(It was not that much amount.). In fact, my levain was in the refrigerator for 1 week not feeded. It was totally out of my mind. It was not in the good state but it was okay. I feeded a little bit spoiled levain and waited. Yeasts were activating in the levain and I made the dough.

 

 

When my levain and dough was standed on the counter to be proofed, the temperature was above 30℃. After 1 hour of bulk fermentation, when I folded, the dough smelled quite strange. It smelled stale a little bit but I wasn't sure it was. It can be the smell of whole-wheat flour or sourdough. I just continued making the bread. When it was out of the refrigerator, the smell was reduced so I baked it.

 

I didn't want to wait until the dough warms up to room temperature. I thought it could be overproofed. I regretted doing that after 15minutes of baking. The cut just spreaded slightly and the dough soared up. If I waited until the dough took off a chill, the crust would have been fabulous. Anyway, the important thing is that it tastes fantastic. The sour flavor is palatable to me and it goes well with the whole-wheat flour. Spread butter on a slice of this bread, you will have one more slice in a few minutes.

 

 

WHOLE-WHEAT LEVAIN

 

yields 1 loaf

 

 

Ingredients

 

for liquid-levain

 

whole-wheat flour 60g

water 60g

liquid culture(Instead, I used the same amount of 70% hydration white levain) 12g

 

for final dough

 

whole-wheat flour 140g

bread flour 200g

water 216g

salt 6g

levain 120g

 

 

Instructions

 

Mix all the ingredients for liquid-levain until well combined, cover with plastic and let it stand on the counter until small bubbles are all around the surface like well-proofed poolish. Add all the ingredients to the levain and knead for about 5 minutes. Cover with plastic and let if proof for 50 minutes. After 50 minutes, fold the dough in four directions and proof for another 50 minutes. Fold once more and proof for 50 minutes more. Shape oblong and give the dough final proofing for about 2 hours in the room temperature or 18 hours in the refrigerator. Preheat the oven to 240℃ with a baking pan. Bake the dough for 30 minutes until nicely brown. Cool at least 1 hour before slicing. Enjoy with butter or by itself.