The Fresh Loaf

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Altaf's blog

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Altaf

Been busy...but watching, and i'm back with goodies.

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Altaf

Finaly arrived.... The bread baker's apprentice at my hands :-D. It looks very informative &the beautiful illustrations make me want to bake.

I have to dedicate my time in the coming days for reading this amazing book.

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Altaf

I always had a fear towords making a preferments (in other words: starter, levain ,biga, poolish....etc). Why?...not sure, may be from the stories i hear about other people experiments or the long description written in professional bakers books.

well, yesterday night i decided to stop thoes annoying night mares. So i opened one of my cooking magazines which had a recipe of rye bread with a good amount of illustrations for a begginer like me. The recipe requires two starters : one made with fine ground rye flour and the other made with wheat flour (un bleached bread flour).

And Since the recipe demands leaving the starters in a room tempreture for 12 houres and up to 20 houres, i made both the starters at 21:00 july 12th. (Here comes the exciting part): :lol:

I waked up this morning july 13th, got dressed then went to take a quick glance at my starters(8:00) before going to work. And.... i found out that the rye starter had exploded :-o :-o :-o. I had to clean up the mess, and i put the both starters inside the fridge just for a precaution. Of course i was late to work

well this is the first disaster. I'll continue the rest of the story with some picutres......End of part one.

july 13th 3:00, Part Two:
I took the starters out from the fridge as you can see them below.....and left them at room tempreture

the rye starter on the right side and what left of it after the explotion. The white starter on the left is doing well.

The author said it`s better to knead the dough without flouring the work sufrace:-o .I followed the recipe steps carfully and another disaster happened, The dough was very very very stickey i could'nt work with. So i tried to solve this embarrssing sitiuation (while my sisters where watching me) by oiling the work surface, but it was sticky, then i floured the work surface a lot...still the dough had a bad behavior.

After one hour of wrestling, i decided to declare the dough's death.

End of the story. Comments from experts are most welcome.

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Altaf

I was in a short trip to Geneva. A lot of Nice breads.

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Altaf

Cinnamon rolls, cinnamon buns, cinnamon bites

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Altaf

I have always been fascinated by artisan breads, i wanted to explore the world of hand crafted breads knowing every single detaile of this art .So suddenly at age 30, i decided to educate my self by diging websites and searching through cookbooks and wishing to end with courses.
Normally i bake on weekends either for my home or familly gatherings. And the following photos shows my first attempt with pesto bread made from the (Italian Baker) by Carol Field.


Rised dough......ready to go to the oven.


Fresh baked bread.


Sliced pesto bread.


Crust & Crumb.

Notes: 1-The bread smells pesto but does not taste as pesto.
2-There was no crust at the bottom of the bread (Hmmmm.....) may be the baking stone was not too hot.
3- The bread was a little bit heavy....could it be the oil of the pesto. :-?

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