Let's Talk About Bread.....

Posted January 16, 2012

At the Daisy Flouring Mill we’ve released a new Bread Flour to kick off the year 2012. On this site we’ll feature many varieties of bread, beginning with Sourdough Bread by Luis Cortes, a baker and a pastry student in our home town of Lancaster PA. We’ll be talking to bakers, educators, and the all- important home bakers as we search for favorite styles of bread, tips about starters, inclusions and yes, photos.

Luis Cortes and Kaitlyn Kozma - come from the YTI Breads classroom in Lancaster, PA, (www.yti.edu) where we visit as often as possible to hang out with these engaging post -high -school pastry students and their teacher, Chef Andy Sciarretta.

Not only do we want to learn from the modules they are studying, we greatly benefit from the perceptive questions they ask about grains, milling and flour. Stay tuned throughout the next few weeks as we visit their pastry classroom and feature their products.

Kaitlyn poses with their loaf of Brioche, made from rich dough with ever so many good uses.  Brioche is great bread for special occasions, aka parties!

 
For many years, I made and served James Beard’s Onion Sandwiches on small rounds of Brioche dough. You can pile up the onions, parsley and lots of mayo without the dough going gooey and soft, when you create these special doughs with lots of egg in them.

Brioche comes from rich dough. It requires special care because it is usually softer and stickier than lean bread doughs. The gluten structure has a lot more work to do, holding together all of the sweet ingredients.  So be especially careful in proofing and baking sweet dough products

See our Basic Brioche Recipe - click here.

 Please send us your stories, pictures, recipes, questions and requests via email to Daisy@ DaisyFlour.com

 

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Tips on adding Inclusions to Doughs

Matt Severson often uses inclusions (apples, olives, even grains like oats or millet) in his breads or scones, so we asked him for his advice on maintaining good dough quality when adding these extra ingredients: “ It’s important to soak all grains that will be added to the dough,” said Matt, “or compensate for the moisture they will absorb by making your dough a little wetter;  that is, add more moisture.”

An important consideration, according to Matt, is to use enough salt. “Most doughs are salted at 2 percent of the weight of the flour and if you add grains or seeds they also need to be salted at the same ratio: 2 percent of their weight. “In the summer – or on days when it’s hot in the bakery – or when the soaked grains will remain at room temperature for more than 8 hours – you can add some of the salt from the recipe to the grains to keep the enzymatic activity down.  

 

“As an aside, this is also done with sourdough starters during hot weather so they don’t over ripen.   The salt keeps activity in check, slows them down a bit.”

 

 

Matt, now age 36, learned baking from his mother and stepfather, a long time ago, in Minnesota. He worked in a bakery in Arizona, then moved to Pennsylvania in 2004.  Near Scranton, he and his wife started fixing up a late 19th century house where he established his kitchen. As the bakery was established, he named his small business after the mockingbirds in the neighborhood.“ Mockingbirds imitate other birds,” he said. “And I like to copy and reinterpret breads and recipes that I find the most enjoyable to make and to eat.”

 

Matt Severson can be contacted at Mockingbirdbakery@verizon.net