October 9, 2018 - 10:03am
Greetings from California
Hello!
My name is Allison Slattery and I look forward to learning more about artisan bread baking from this community. I've been a long time home cook and baker but I have recently (the past three months) become obsessed with bread making. To date I've made white and wheat loafs, cinnamon rolls, apple bread, cinnamon raisin bread, ciabatta, English muffins, marble rye, bagels, pretzels, hamburger buns, French bread, crumpets, and yesterday a chocolate babka. I began a sourdough starter a few days ago (10/6/2018) so I am still waiting to begin using a natural starter in my breads. We also homebrew quite frequently so I'd like to start using the spent grains in some breads. Definitely something I need to research!
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If that pic is any indication, you'll soon be turning out some nice sourdough breads.
If that pic is any indication, you'll soon be turning out some nice sourdough breads.
I think I'm going to try the yeasted version of the Community Bake recipe since my starter isn't ready yet.
Hi Alison, I'm sure you'll find tons of inspiration around here. That babke looks fantastic. Breadmaking is indeed obsession-forming :-) One piece of advice I've found invaluable (and something you may find happens intuitively as you get to grips with sourdough) is to choose one bread, and make that one over and over til you get a feel for it. If you're doing things like crumpets, waffles and pancakes, you may find those useful for the leftover/discard of your starter as you cultivate it. Happy baking!!
I'm going to try the yeasted version of the Community Bake recipe to start and see how it goes! :)
and sit back for hours of reading, formulas and ideas for all kinds of bread. Not many folks here bake much yeast bread after baking with SD. You can also bake with natural yeast water cultivated from fruits and not ever have to use commercial yeast again when you want a bread that isn't sour or you want to tone down the sour in a SD bread. Just type yeast water or YW in the sherch box
Welcome and Happy baking
Looking forward to this research. We brew 12 gallon batches so we have A LOT of spent grains left after a brew day. Luckily we have neighborhood chicken coops that love the stuff. I'm not sure I could make that much bread! :) I'm also curious about how the different beer yeast strains we use might play into baking.
That's a beautiful babka, Allison!
Looking forward to seeing your other baking.
Happy baking!
David
Thanks David! This looks like a great place for inspiration and advice!