Hi all,

I just had to throw away my two rather expensive wooden bannetons, and I had to share my story.

As many of you know, you are never, ever, supposed to wash bannetons. You let the dough rise, and then you just tap out the excess flour. In San Diego I've had them for two years, and they were fine. Now I am in Israel, where the climate is different. The summer is much hotter and much more humid, which makes a difference, insect wise. I was going to use the bannetons tonight, after not having touched them for a few months. To my horror, they were full with little tan dots. These are either insect eggs or yeast spores (the dots did look a lot like granular yeast), but I am going with insect eggs as the more likely suspects. I am just glad I caught them at this stage, before all the insects were born (although I have the exterminators coming this Thursday).

At first I tried to wash the bannetons. This not only did not help much (there were eggs between the crevices of the wood), but also taught me why bannetons should never touch water. The wood is very soft, and the water made it expand and splinter. To the bin they go (not that I could have ever brought myself to use them after having seen them infested with insect eggs). I do this with a heavy heart but with no regrets.  

The most annoying thing about this is that it wasn't easy to get the bannetons. I had to specially mail order them. I made sure to get the wooden, highest-quality, ones. And now they're gone. Poor me. The next set of bannetons I buy will be plastic. At least those can be easily cleaned.

Boaz.

After preparing for it all of last week, feeding my sourdough daily with mash to make it a Monica Spiller-type barm, I finally made "Whole Wheat Barm Bread 2008", from the recipe that Monica Spiller recently published.

The resulting bread is excellent, one of the best whole-wheat breads I've tasted. I will definitely make it again. I heartily recommend it. You can read more about my making of it here. 

Hi all,

The third meeting of bread baking enthusiasts in San Diego took place today. 

It was a great meeting, with 7 of us in attendance. I took pictures of all the breads we brought, and wrote about the meeting. You can find it all here:

http://foldingpain.blogspot.com/2008/03/third-san-diego-bread-lovers-meeting.html

Our next meeting will probably be on April 19, with the subject of rye breads. If you are in the area, please come! 

Hi all,

Today I had the pleasure (together with Susan, Sue, and Kurt) to attend a class given by Peter Reinhart in San Diego. It was a great class in which we learnt how to make some breads from Peter's new book.

Since I have Peter's new book, I already knew a lot of what he was presenting. Still, I got to taste and see some breads I would not have otherwise made; I got to meet Peter Reinhart; and I got to taste some properly made breads.

I baked the Pain De Camapgne from Daniel Leader's amazing book, Local Breads. I added walnuts and raisins to it. It came out delicious. Here's yet another recommendation for this book.

Anyhow, here are some pics:

Raisin Walnut Sourdough Bread

Hi all,

A friend of mine is originally from Ferghana, and he told me about a bread they used to eat there when he was a kid, called "Lipioshka". I understand it is a rather traditional Uzbek bread. It is a little like a large bialy in shape: a round disc, thick around the edges and very thin in the center. The center is stamped with a special tool (or simply pricked with a fork) to prevent rising. Traditionally, it is baked in a Tandr, an Uzbek oven not unlike a Tandoor. 

This weekend I decided to bake a couronne. I used my sourdough for it. I am not entirely happy with the shape, but the crumb and taste were great. I've written about it at length here.

For now, here's a picture of the finished couronne:

And here's a picture of the crumb:

I've been doing quite a bit of baking this weekend. In addition to the Grape Harvest Focaccia I've blogged about yesterday, today I made the potato pizza from Maggie Glezer's "Artisan Baking". The recipe calls for a very wet dough -- more water than flour, actually. You knead the dough using the paddle on your stand mixer for 20 whole minutes. In the process it miraculously transforms from this:

Today I decided to bake the Grape Harvest Focaccia from Daniel Leader's new book, Local Breads.

Since I prefer my doughs to be lean where possible, I decided to make it without the 1/3 cup of olive oil in the dough that the recipe calls for. I only used about half a tablespoon of olive oil for spreading over the dough before baking. I also increased the amount of red grapes. The amount called for in the recipe didn't seem to be enough.