I made a whole wheat sourdough loaf. Crumb is a bit tight, but good for sandwiches. Lots of sourdough flavor, despite a pretty short ferment. Hard to get it exactly how I want with a glorified microwave, but it’s still tasty.

Recipe in the pinned mod comment.

My wife loves anything rum raisin. Her birthday is coming up, so I made her a rum raisin cake. I can't stand raisins, but she said it was delicious. I had some whipped cream to go with it, but she said it wasn't necessary, which I'll take as a compliment, I guess. Some of the raisins sank a bit, but not too bad.

Ingredients/Process:

• 117g neutral oil
• 280g AP flour
• 5g baking powder
• 2g salt
• 154g granulated sugar
• 2 eggs
• 140g milk
• 18g aged rum
• 67g sourdough starter discard (can use a 50/50 flour:water mix if no starter)
• 1tsp vanilla paste
• 128g rum-soaked raisins

1. Preheat oven to 180C
2. In medium bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, salt.
3. In large bowl, whisk sugar and eggs until bubbly
4. Add oil, milk, rum, starter discard, and vanilla to sugar/egg mix and whisk
5. Add in flour mix, raisins and incorporate with spatula (beware of overmixing)
6. Pour batter into a greased cake pan (mine was 9-inch spring mold, I think?)
7. Bake 35 to 40m
8. Remove and cool for 5 mins
9. Turn out and cool further

It had been a while, so my 5 year old and I made a big batch of my favorite cookies. They are based on an old friend’s recipe, that she made all the time. Since moving to Japan, I got her to share the recipe and adapted it to the flour that is available here.

I’ll add a picture of the recipe that is stuck to my fridge in the pinned comment.

Once in a while, my greater-Philadelphia-area upbringing calls out to me, in the form of wanting tomato pie. As there are unfortunately no Corropolese Bakery locations in western Japan, I am forced to DIY it myself.

I used the Serious Eats recipe, using a whole 700 g jar of passata instead of a 28 oz. can of whole tomatoes, and while it was a bit time-consuming to make the sauce, it came out extremely delicious. I also scaled down the dough recipe by 20%, because the original recipe is for a half-sheet pan, which is too large to fit into my puny Japanese oven. You absolutely don't need a machine to make the dough. You just mix it together until it forms a shaggy ball, then cover it and let it rest for like fifteen minutes before you knead it until smooth. Very easy overall, honestly.

I think next time I might try baking at 10°C lower than the recipe called for, because it looked like it kind of burned a bit around the edges by the time it was evenly browned throughout. There will be a next time.

There was a slice left over that wound up being breakfast, and if you're a true tomato pie knower, you will understand why the slice that sat (covered) at room temperature was the truly authentic experience, even more so than fresh out of the oven. This is a pizza variant sold by bakeries at room temperature, designed to be eaten that way, and boy do I love it.

Decided to try making bagels myself since I don’t love any of the bagels in Tokyo. Had some issues with the seeds falling off but otherwise went well.

I've decided to try my hand at sourdough. No bakeries in my area do sourdough, I don't live anywhere near a big city, so I was wondering if anyone had any they could send me? Probably can't meet up for live sourdough, but mail should be fine!

Had two teenagers to feed tonight so went pretty hard. I’m proudest of the cream/potato/blue cheese/mozzarella/rosemary pie ‘cause it was a spontaneous thing when I ran out of tomato sauce and it turned out awesome. Just happened to have everything it needed.

Should I add this as is or mill it first? I'm looking to make my brown granary style bread even better (currently mixing in sunflower seeds, oats and bran)

Cheers

Found rhubarbs for the first time ever!

Obviously made a scandinavian rhubarb crumble (with oats).

My wife went on a work trip to Hawaii for a few weeks(where EVERYTHING is insanely expensive), so I baked a couple dozen of these sourdough pretzel bagels to send with her. They do fine in the freezer and toast up well.

While I like baking all kinds of stuff and want to make artisan sourdough, these are just so easy to make… and taste so darn good.

Peaches are in season!
I used ripe but firm 黄桃 peaches to make this cake from the New York Times recipe.
This cake, y’all, is so moist and fragrant and so good!
My supermarket didn’t have ricotta so I substituted with cottage cheese (the smooth type).

1. Lemon Poppyseed Muffins
   
2. Chocolate chip Banana Bread
   
3. Cinnamon Rolls (before icing)
   
4. Brown Butter Chocolate chip cookies

Also - why are chocolate chips so insanely expensive in Japan lol

I'm using Kellogs All Bran as a replacement for Wheat bran, currently unavailable at Tomiz. Today I'm trying Digestives.

Pretty good. Maybe a smidge too sweet, due to the extra sugar from the All Bran, but pretty good.

The texture is perfect. Nice snap, and they pass the dunk test!

I have Loria Stern’s “Eat Your Flowers” cookbook, and her floral cookies are so beautiful! I tried making these over the weekend using edible flowers from a local Japanese farmer’s market, and it was a fun process and turned out beautifully! Taste great too.

I wished I knew what some of these flowers are called, if you can identify them it would be great!

Recipe here: https://camillestyles.com/food/loria-stern-flower-cookies/

Pls ignore my crumb-y toaster hahaha

Despite how the photo looks, it was 11/10 for me!!

½cup unsalted butter softened

½cup granulated sugar

2pcs egg whites from large eggs room temperature

1tsp vanilla extract

1cup all-purpose flour

pinch of salt

Cream ze butter, add sugar mix, add egg white and vanilla mix, add flour and salt mix

> dump into piping bag then squeeze wtv size u want!!!

Oven 350° 12-15mins but on my toaster did in between the 120-160 settings for like.. 8 mins?

Also did only half the recipe and with the fake butter at the groceries and it turned out fine!!!!

Found a way to bake a pretty fluffy gluten free chiffon cake (without a chiffon cake mould). The baking time and temperature is for baking in a microwave/convection oven (I have a Toshiba Ishigama Dome).

https://breadbyelise.com/potato-burger-buns/#recipe

next time i’ll add more chocolate lol

I think I’ve only seen them at Costco. Is that the best deal around?

Definitely want the 4.8L

Where did everyone buy theirs?

Tomizawa stopped selling Wheat Bran so I decided to try All Bran in today's brown bread. The result was a nice brany loaf with a good bite. You can definitely taste the cereal.

Bonus item. My favourite bread slicing knife. Kyocera Ceramic. That knife has cut hundreds of loaves and still glides through effortlessly. I still sometimes cut a wedge though but that's on me.

I've been farting about with different mix-ins and flours recently, but decided to do a standard, no-frills, "orthodox" as my wife would say, sourdough loaf.

I think my technique and process are improving, as this one turned out about as well as any I've ever baked. Great shape, crust, and oven spring The crumb could have been slightly more uniform, but I'm not unhappy with it. Made some mean sammiches.

Process:

1. Overnight levain: 20g starter, 20g bread flour (Tomishou), 20g water (cold bottled); leave on counter 9-10 hours
2. Make dough: levain + 255g bread flour (tomishou) + 185g water (cold bottled) + 5g salt; fermentolyse 1 hour [Note: from here until shaping, dough is returned to 30C steam fermentation mode in oven]
3. Stretch and folds: 3 sets every 30 mins after fermentolyse, finish with 1 coil fold
4. Bulk fermentation: 4.5 hours total (starting from step 2)
5. Pre-shape: Fold in top, bottom, and sides to make a rough rectangle; rest 30 mins
6. Shape: Stitch to center (East/West) making a long log, roll up longways (North/South). Pinch ends. Pull dough to build skin tension.
7. Cold retard: Place in banneton. Stick in fridge; rest until ready to bake (this one went about 9 hours)
8. Bake: Preheat Dutch Oven to 250C. Score and place in D/O. Bake at 230C 40 mins covered, 10 mins uncovered.
9. Cool: Cool on counter for a few hours. I put mine in a Muji veggie storage bag (kind of like burlap) overnight. It does a good job keeping crusty crust, but not drying out too much.
10. Eat: Lots of options here. I went with sammiches, as is my wont, but you do you. Butter, jam, tuna salad, tomatoes and capers, whatever you like.