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Its 10:26 AM and I have just finished Baking. I started at 04:30. Shortly my wife and I will be off to deliver our bread to an Organic Shop we bake for.

Three years ago we started baking in a small shop. We had the idea of baking healthy wholegrain bread. Boy were we wrong. Mostly we just got complaints about how hard the bread was. I have to say that in Malaysia bread is very very very soft and fluffy. However there is a tremendous rise in Diabetes, High Blood Pressure, Obesity etc that we thought the Whole Grain approach was a good one.

Despite poor sales we persisted, augmenting our income with wedding and birthday cakes.

Last year, around Christmas time, I entered an Organic Shop, can't remember why. A young lady, one of the sales assistants came up to me and pulled my beard and called me Father Christmas. Outside the store there were several Chinese men running around with red coats and false beards rumbling HO HO HO. I was the real thing.

After this rather wonderful greeting we started talking about the products in the store and my wife and I told her we were bakers. "Why don't you sell here she exclaimed!" Well to cut it short we sent over some samples, they loved it and now we supply four days a week. Nearly everything gets sold.

There was nothing wrong with our bread, we were just selling it in the wrong place.

I usually wouldn't include something like this in the bread feed, but what the heck... it is Halloween.

Be careful in the kitchen, everyone.

Happy Halloween!

I made Melon bread for the first time today using the recipe posted by minako. We loved them.

I followed her directions with only I few adjustments. One adjustment I made was to put no egg in the bread dough and 1 whole egg in the cookie dough. I also didn't happen to have any pastry flour in the house, which I assume is what she meant by "soft flour", so I used all-purpose unbleached flour in both doughs.

Here are the doughs when they were ready to shape. The cookie doughs had been chilled and the bread doughs had already risen once.

After rolling out one of the cookie dough circles, I placed a ball of bread dough inside and wrap it up.

Then I flipped them over, score them gently with the back of a butter knife, and sprinkled on a little sugar.

Ready to bake!

Here they are done. It looks like I should have scored them a bit more, because the melon-y pattern completely disappeared.

Up close.

No matter, the kids loved them!

Yum yum.

Thank you again for the recipe, minako!

I baked oodles of quick breads today. Pumpkin bread, scones, popovers, and this weird potato-apple pancake from Country Breads of the World, which I recently got from the library. A good book it seems so far.

They all turned out well. The pancake kinda fell apart because I didn't use enough flour, but it tasted excellent. Want to see?

Tomorrow I bake with yeast. In fact, I need to get some sponges going right now.

Ahh...finally after more than a 2 week wait, it arrived. Peter Reinhart's bread baker's apprentice finally got to my doorstep. Got it from Amazon.
Haven't went thru it thoroughly yet, but it certainly looks great, though i find adhering to some of the recipes difficult at times (as in measures). ;)

I just set a starter out last night. Made of raisin water and unbleached all purpose. Hopefully i'll manage to get some loaves outta it this time.. hehe..

This is the 2nd time i'm doing this. Earlier this year, when i knew very little about making bread, my starter looked fermented, but they didn't produce anything or make dough rise... Guess it's just some other bacteria, not wild yeast. I live in a tropical country. Hope it's ideal for wild yeast and not some other nasty microbiological impostors...

Didn't use wholewheat flour. The last time i used wholewheat flour for an overnight poolish, it was fermented till the loaves smelled nasty and tasted bitter. lol

Hmm, how do u know if ur starter is ready to be used and how long b4 u can use it, usually....

I baked a pumpkin french bread this weekend:

Pumpkin French Bread Makes 2 loaves Poolish: 8 oz. water 8 oz. all-purpose unbleached flour 1/8 teaspoon instant yeast

Final dough:
All of the poolish
16 oz. all-purpose unbleached flour
4 oz. pumpkin puree
4 oz. water
1 teaspoon instant yeast
1 tablespoon brown sugar

The standard approach here: the poolish sat out overnight, two rises before shaping, baked at 465 for about 25 minutes in an oven with steam. Take a look at the rustic bread recipe if you want more info.

I did a decent job scoring them:

The pumpkin loaves are on the outside, a rustic bread I baked in the center.

I think if I try it again I'll bump the amount of pumpkin up to 6 ounces. You really can't taste the pumpkin much. But you catch a whiff of it pulling a slice of it out of the toaster.

Today, I baked a birthday cake for Floyd.

Our son was a great helper.

There's our cake completed.

And served...

And look! My first baking blog entry on your site too!
Happy Birthday to you, Floyd!

Sunday is my birthday. Sunday is also World Bread Day.

Coincidence? I think not.

After my excessive baking spree last weekend, I had said I wasn't going to bake this weekend. But I may just have to celebrate World Bread Day by putting together a loaf or two.