The Fresh Loaf

A Community of Amateur Bakers and Artisan Bread Enthusiasts.

Newbie from BC

Pablo's picture
Pablo

Newbie from BC

Hello bakers,

My name is Paul, I live in the Okanagan Valley of British Columbia. I'm from the US and moved here just over 3 years ago. Our citizenship applications are in! I've baked bread since the early '70s, but very sporatically and never with much understanding of what I was doing. In the hippie days it was all "by hand only", somewhere I got a copy of The Tasajara Bread Book and that got me started, but, you know, life moves on and for the '90s and 2000s I have been using a bread machine to mix the dough and then baking it on a stone. I had a sort of "house bread" going in Colorado before we moved here. It was based on Giusto's Old Mill flour, a reduced bran whole wheat flour - it had all the germ and 20% of the bran. I would pull a fist-sized ball of dough out and cycle it to the next batch and eventually have a nice sour going. Anyway, here in BC I can't get Giusto's flour and I've been busy with home improvements and I was unhappy with the lack of control on the dough cycle on the bread machine. Initially I want to get a "house bread" going here, probably sour dough, but definitely with an open crumb. I never knew that "open crumb" was what I wanted until I started reading and looking around on the web. I now have a counter top Kitchen Aid mixer with a dough hook for kneading. Also after doing some reading I see that the density of flours varies greatly. I look forward to settling on a flour and being able to get consistent results that I'm happy with. I'm following the pineapple juice starter method and I'm at day 4, there are bubbles, so that looks good. I'm optimistic that this web site will be helpful. I love bread, it's so basic.

Paul

PaddyL's picture
PaddyL

Their 'best for bread' is very good, though I can only get the white here in Montreal.  Lately I've been buying Weston unbleached all-purpose which no one seems to have heard of, but it's very good and much cheaper than all the other flours.  Five Roses is also a very good choice, and their unbleached bread flours, though a bit pricey, are terrific.  If you want stone-ground flour, check out the organic section of your local supermarket.

Pablo's picture
Pablo

No, I haven't tried any of those.  I'll check out my local SaveOn flour section.  Thanks for the suggestions.