Lately I’ve been working on a new (to me) approach to making enriched breads, one that involves dialing in the composition of the preferment to create a soft, long-keeping bread rather than relying on a precooked starch like a tangzhong. Given how much I use the latter approach in my baking, it’s sort of upended my understanding of things, which is both troubling and exciting in equal measure. There’s still lots of testing left to do, but I’m looking forward to sharing more with you all here soon. If you are curious, the shokupan/Japanese milk bread recipe I’m currently using (pictured above) is called the Five-Thousand Dollar Starter Bread, and is a scaled-down version of this formula.
What recipes have you all been working with lately that you’ve gotten excited about? Share with the rest of us in the comments below!
—Andrew
Monday Open Thread 2/21/22
Ooooh. For a moment I thought that might have been a riff on the croissant cube popularized by Bedros Kabranian. My eyes aren’t what they used to be. This looks much easier. This last weekend, other than fitting in some work with sick patients, I tried a few different recipes for Boston Creme Pie(Cake). The only thing I seemed to recreate was failure. Edible failure, but failure nonetheless. Here’s hoping for a better week in the kitchen for all of us. Happy Monday, Chef.
Happy Monday, everyone! Hey, I made the dark deli rye! Absolutely delicious. Where can I post a pic? Andrew, grateful you introduced us to the Ground Up folks, though next time I will purchase from them in person. I made a batch of dough for Kenji’s choc chip cookies and have now frozen cookie-size chunks of it to bake in the toaster oven in manageable quantities at a time. Maybe those would be good would some rye flour, hmm. But really the one thing I’ve been doing on repeat is homemade hot and sour soup. I hope this doesn’t put Chinese restaurants out of business.