I used this time to bake a variety of goods and experiment!
Sourdough Bread
This bread was made, as is tradition, with a whole wheat sourdough starter. Baking inside a dutch oven aided in creating a good hard crust. I was slightly disappointed with the crumb inside, as it is missing the wide airy structure characteristic of a sourdough. Nevertheless, the flavor was there and I am happy with my first attempt at sourdough!
No knead bread
I’ve made this bread quite a few times, and I made it again for thanksgiving. It is really simple, with minimal effort yet consistent results.
Herb Focaccia
This was my first foray into bread making. It was a simple recipe, and it was quite foolproof. Despite using old yeast, the bread came out delicious. It was a little harder and more crisp than I would have liked, but that can be attributed to spreading the dough too thin on the sheet pan.
Biscuits
These biscuits were made for mother’s day brunch. Biscuits tend to be very easy, and always come out well. I’m particularly proud of the rise I managed, as the biscuits grew definitely 1.5+ inches in the oven.
Zucchini Bread
After initial consternation surrounding the delivery of 6 zucchini’s to our house as part of a farm box service, I found a really wonderful recipe. The zucchini, when grated very fine, disappears after being cooked. The result is an amazing moist very tender bread that tastes warm with cinnamon and nutmeg. This was likely one of my favorite end result’s I have achieved so far.
Hokkaido Dinner Rolls
These rolls were quite enjoyable to make. The addition of the tangzhong, a Japanese technique of cooking flour and water, made these rolls exceptionally soft.
Apple Galette
This recipe was made in early fall when the apples weighed down our tree significantly, and many fell from the wind before they were ready. I did not have a pie pan, therefore I made a galette rather than a pie. I believe it worked all the better though, as the apples were not quite ripe and therefore did not require the form of a pan to hold the pastry’s shape.
Cinnamon Sticky Buns
These sticky buns were a made out of left over pizza dough. Using a yeasted dough made them much more fluffy and breadlike opposed to ones I have made before, that would turn out more like a flaky pastry. Rather than use a traditional icing sugar glaze on top, the nuts and brown sugar caramel made them perfect to have warm with coffee.
Pineapple Upside Down Cake
We’ve been getting lucky and managing to obtain perfectly sweet and ripe pineapples during lockdown. The picture on the left is the second upside down cake we baked. The first (not pictured) was baked in a dutch oven, which resulted in a lovely hard caramelized brown crust. I personally prefer it that way, as it added another texture to complement the soft juicy pineapple. The second one was baking in a square cake pan, which gave a softer exterior, and allowed the caramelized sugar to really soak in.
European Hard Rolls
These rolls were quite an ordeal to make! They started with a preferment or biga made of water and flour that was left to sit overnight. However I wanted to make the rolls for my mother’s birthday the next morning, so I made the preferment in the morning and let it sit until the evening. Then, throughout the night, I woke up every 1-2 hours to reshape, punchdown and transfer my dough. After staying up the entire night, I put them into bake at 8 am. Unfortunately my knife was not sharp enough, and my scores were not deep enough, and hindered them from rising. I think next time I’ll use a scissor to snip in scores. Nevertheless, they were delicious!
Coffee Cake
This coffee cake was an impromptu breakfast bake that resulted from a desire for iced coffee, and consequently a need for coffee cake. Next time I think I’ll make the glaze thicker, and let it cool before topping for those distinctive lines.
Neapolitan Pizza
Neapolitan pizza dough ferments in the fridge for 1-3 days, which allows the gluten to relax and for the dough to build flavor. The particular pizza pictured was made in the oven, but over quarantine I have been experimenting with cooking pizza over the grill. The grill reaches temperatures of 750 degrees Fahrenheit and more, which along with a pizza stone, gives a wonderful pillowy crust and crisp bottom, in only 5 minutes. The oven results in a even crisper crust, as it dries out over the 15 minutes it spends, but it does not rise as high. I would like to order an ooni koda, but they were all sold out when I last checked!
Edit: My cousins gifted us an ooni koda as a surprise! We just made our first pizza’s tonight outside. I’m realizing now that I really need a proper metal peel. I got around having a not so good wooden peel by putting parchment paper under the pizza when I used an oven or a grill. However the ooni gets to temperatures higher than 900 degrees F, and the parchment paper spontaneously caught flames and burned half of our first pizza into ashes. Eventually we got the knack of it, heavily dusting the bottom of our dough with semolina, and confidently transferring it into the oven. Pizza’s in the ooni cook in under 90 seconds. That being said, I do think I like the oven method best. I personally love when the oven dries out the crust. The ooni is the best for high hydration Neapolitan style, with those massive charred bubbles that rise from the crust. The pizza stays quite soft, and doesn’t crisp fully. To each their own!