Leaves from a Baker's Notebook

[daidoji_gisei]

Today saw the re-staging of the classic struggle of Woman Versus Pizza Crust Dough. Woman emerged triumphant, though at the cost of some sore arms. I need to add a little more water to the dough, as rolling it out is hard, too hard. It's difficult to judge how much is correct amount though. With regular bread dough I can just feel the dough in the mixer and know when it's right, but the pizza crust dough gets a 24 hour rest in the cooler and that changes everything. I seem to have arrived at a taste everyone likes, so at least I can leave that part alone.

I also made a second batch of Flax Bread #1 today. It's FB#1 because Flax Bread is a new bread I'm developing, and this is the first iteration of the test cycle, and I wanted a name that would signal the customers that there will be different versions of Flax Bread to come. I'm looking forward to playing around with this--I haven't been able to work on a new bread recipe in ages. (Pizza crust doesn't count. Don't ask why, it just doesn't.) I don't expect to make anything too fancy out of it, though. Good bread doesn't need bells and whistles, and I'm not interested in making anything other than good bread.

Comments

[yoritomo-reiko.livejournal.com]

Yeah. Alf's been working on bara brith for a while now, trying to get it right. Not that I have any clue what it's normally supposed to taste like. But like a lot of things, there are a couple dozen recipes out there and they're all different. Yeast, no yeast. Marmalade, tea-soaked fruit. It's crazy. :)

[daidoji-gisei.livejournal.com]

Marmalade sounds a little chi-chi to me, but I have seen the tea-soaked fruit mentioned. My (shallow) research leads me to suspect that the yeast version is the 'authentic' one, but it's probably just a case of a yeast bread acquiring a non-yeast version. Sally Lunn and the whole tribe of coffee cakes did it, so it not exactly a novel happening.

[yoritomo-reiko.livejournal.com]

Well, like I said, there are several that have it as an ingredient. He uses self-raising flour. Which I'm not sure what the difference is, totally, but... *shrugs* I like what he's made so far. He says it's still too cakey. Well, I'm good with whatever he makes. :)