foodforthought's blog

What the heck do you do with a surfeit of egg whites? Why do I have so many? Between ice cream, crème pâtissière, cream of mushroom soup, carbonara, etc., I seem to use many more yolks than whole eggs. It’s an ongoing struggle to keep from just dumping those whites into the disposal, so I store them, sometimes freeze them if we’re traveling, until the container in the corner of the refrigerator gets full.

Not exactly sure why, possibly Benny’s latest poppy seed eye popper or possibly Passi(io)nate Tom’s explorations, but I got inspired to revive an old family favorite that’s gone missing since I dove into baking with sourdough. For most of our boys’ childhood, my darling wife made bread 2-3 times a week. Her quest to increase whole grain consumption eventually yielded  an awfully good loaf starring whole wheat flour, bulgur wheat (wheat berries just wouldn’t cooperate), wheat bran, raisins, rolled oats and nuts.

For the last few weeks, Winter seemed to be finally giving up it’s hold on the Northern California foothills of the Sierra Nevada, so we planned a picnic to kick off the next 4 months of picnics. Of course it rained all day and kept to mid-forties temperatures, so we migrated indoors, but the conversation, salads, wine and blackberry pie were still enjoyed by all.

…after watching a few videos from the Vito Iacopelli and Gluten Morgan YouTube channels. Having been reticent (or just lazy?) to explore much beyond my standard 100% hydration levains and poolish, the videos made a case for lower hydration pre-ferments.

…and when you make ice cream, you end up with a lot of unused egg whites. And when you have a lot of egg whites, @txfarmer’s super soft sourdough sandwich bread calls my name. So I whipped up 2.5 kg of her dough substituting buttermilk for her specified whole milk.

Claire Saffitz and Martin Philip both riffed on maritozzi recently, so I thought, why not? They are basically a brioche bun filled with a cream filling. I made some marscapone from the excess cream on the dairy shelf of the fridge and mixed it with vanilla flavored whipped cream. Following Clare’s lead, I soaked the brioche crumb with a vanilla-rum syrup. I found the prep to be a bit fussy. The final result was good but not great in my opinion. Those buns that got larger syrup infusions were significantly better than the more lightly-soaked ones which I found to be awfully bready.

Been on something of a viennoiserie jag lately brought on, of course, by the holidays, visitors and deliciousness. With 7 dozen croissant, 4 dozen kouign-amann and one chausson aux pommes under my belt (gonna need a new one if this keeps up), a few brainworms have been nibbling on my thoughts.

Finally got around to making bialys based on the King Arthur recipe. I've always loved the bialys they used to make at the Mendocino Bakery which has since changed hands several times and had sadly disappeared from the menu on our last visit early in the Covid epoch. I will be looking for them when we visit again in a few months. In the meantime, these came out just great so we won't go without.

Back in February, when @DanAyo posted about his experiences with an unexpected (by me, anyway) style of enriched sourdough posted by @txfarmer in 2011, I decided to give it a try.

A few days ago, @pul posted some lovely pics of creamy, yellow semola loaves that reminded me of the community bake of a year or so ago and my good results from that exploration. ...which got me ruminating and scheming on following @pul's lead.

So down the rabbit hole of @dmsnyder's, @Franko's and @dabrownman's meanderings on Pane Tipo Altamura I dropped, deciding eventually to follow @pul's lead with a few modifications.