Another round of sourdough morning buns baked in the toaster oven. Facebook post on Sourdough Baking group resulting in requests for recipe. To validate repeatability of results, I baked another batch.
The dough is a three day process, but active time is minimal (for laminated dough). The small batch makes lamination easy and less fussy.
Green tea matcha bundt cake with red bean paste and whipped cream ice cream.
Because of the Kids Baking Championship’s Lava Cake episode, we’re baking a lot of bundt cakes at the moment. Last recipe yielded too much batter for my 6 mini bundt cake pan, so I reduced the recipe by 50%. This resulted in too small bundt cakes, more like donuts. The side benefit is that it’s a healthier serving size.
Ingredients
125 g all purpose flour
100 g sugar
3 g salt
4 g baking soda
8 g matcha powder
113 g butter, melted and cooled to room temperature
118 g of water
1 large egg
70 g sour cream
Recipe
Hmmm … a little too little batter. These are going to be mini-mini bundt cakes …
Baked at 350 degrees F for 20 minutes.
Allowed to completely cool, but these bundts got a little stuck to the pan. Will try to oil and flour the pan instead of oil spray only.
Experimenting making Japanese takoyaki with red bean filling. Wanted a lighter version than straight pancake batter so added 1 egg whipped egg white.
For 9 takoyaki (one pan): 1/2 cup of Krusteaz pancake mix (+ 3/8 cup of water) combined with 1 egg white whipped to soft peaks. Pour half the mixture into an ebelskiver pan over medium heat (350 degrees f), add red bean mixture, pour other half of mixture, flip.
Because of the two half additions of batter, the results looked like rounded dorayaki. Next time, I’ll use the traditional takoyaki and ebelskiver technique to make a round seamless ball.
70% hydration sourdough baguettes with cold bulk fermentation overnight in the refrigerator.
Strong oven spring showed weakness in my shaping.
With Google Express delivering barley malt from Whole Foods yesterday, information pills bagel tests continue. While this batch is slightly over baked at 22 min and 400 degrees F, progress is being made.
Formula is 55% hydration, 5% barley malt, 2% salt and 1.25% instant yeast. Cold ferment for bulk overnight in the refrigerator. One hour final proof, boil in baked baking soda water solution for 30 seconds each side, and in the oven.
Post boil:
Post final proof:
Little girl woke up at 6:30am requesting cookies. So we made chewey chocolate chip cookies.
Gasp! Bread that’s not gorgeous?!? What am I posting? How can I show people that I am an amazing/perfect baker?!?
Life is about recovery and learning from failure.
This bake just got away from me. A 75% hydration is fraught with potential failure points, and I hit them pretty well. The final proof was too long (was distracted with a more pressing activity) and then the dough stuck to the couche.
The crumb is at least decent.
Tomorrow will be better.
Been attempting an original recipe for Vietnamese baguettes. One of the “Perfect Sourdough” FB members shared a high hydration high protein recipe and I converted it to sourdough and used 5% brown rice flour to hopefully yield a crisper crust.
The member also noted that she did not have a baking stone, but baked on an aluminum sheet pan. I did a comparison bake for her, keeping everything thing else constant.
With a higher thermal mass and better heat transfer, the baking stone produced an almost 50% increase in volume and a more open crumb structure.
The family has been watching the Kid’s Baking Championship and the little one has the volcano cake challenge on repeat. Of course we needed to make our own. But first we needed a base recipe for a chocolate mini bundt cake.
Scouring my many cookbooks produced a whopping zero recipes! One of the cake recipes could have been adapted, but with no knowledge of bundt cake baking dynamics, it wasn’t worth the risk. As such, the Internet it is.
My fast, easy and yet moist baking requirement was met with Two Peas & Their Pod chocolate bundt cake recipe, as it included sour cream.
Next time, 1/2 the batter will be made. The recipe yielded enough for 12 mini bundt cakes. Which I presume is a regular bundt cake size. I do dislike american measurements, difficult to scale appropriately.
Here is an adapted recipe, for a 6 mini bundt cake pan. Note that I use significantly less sugar but increase the cocoa powder ratio.
1/2 cup unsalted butter
1/4 cup cocoa powder
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
1/2 cup water
1 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cups granulated sugar
3/4 teaspoons baking soda
1 large eggs
1/4 cup sour cream
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
