howdy from atlanta
hello everyone!
i've been lurking around here for a few months learning a ton and drooling over some beautiful loaves.
my bf and i have this crazy idea that we're going to open a little vegan bakery. so when i'm not working the day job, i'm trying to practice as much as i can. it's hard to schedule the time, but last weekend i did manage to bust out 6 loaves of bread on saturday, including sourdough. i'll post about those in the appropriate places but i'm really happy with how they came out!
other than the time to actually bake, my biggest battle is against my stupid oven. it's almost impossible to keep it at a steady temperature. it'll hold at one temp and then randomly shoot up 50-75 degrees. so i have to watch it like a hawk and sometimes have trouble with the bottoms of my breads getting a little extra done.
this past week was also spent playing with laminated dough. so here's a question: how do you keep from packing on the pounds when testing recipes? i'm giving lots of stuff away, but too much is still going in my pie hole. i don't know whether that's a :-) or a :-(
laura
Welcome Laura...
I'm also in Atlanta. I found this site a few months back and it's really helped me improve my baking skills. That's a good thing, since as you are well aware, there's not much in the way of good bread to be found in Atlanta. Hopefully you'll be able to turn your bakery dream into reality one day. Let me know if you need any help. :)
Mike
Mike, thanks for the kind welcome! What kind of baking are you doing? I have noticed since I've started baking bread that it indeed has WAY more flavor than just about anything I've bought around here. And I don't even know what I'm doing! Oh, and the typical Atlanta question: ITP or OTP?
I did say "in Atlanta", not near Atlanta. :)
I've been making a lot of rye breads. My wife is German, so I try to make darker, heartier breads that remind me of all the great breads I ate over there. I have Dan Leader's "Local Bread" and Jeffrey Hamelman's "Bread". I've been getting into the Hamelman book a lot more lately. I just made his mixed flour miche. It was part whole wheat, part rye, and part white bread flour. It came out really nice, I think. Since I got into making bread more seriously, we have barely ever bought bread from a store. I definitely find the taste and quality better than most bread you can buy around here--maybe not Alon's, but better than most.
So where are you located? I'm in Reynoldstown.
You did indeed say "in". I've heard that before though from people who live anywhere from Conyers to Alpharetta. :-) People used to do that all the time when I lived in San Francisco too, say "San Francisco" when they really meant "Bay Area." Details, details.
Mmmm....rye. I'd love to do a nice pumpernickel. Maybe that'll go on my list of things to do this long weekend coming up. My BF thought he hated rye bread, but I had a theory that it was actually the caraway seeds he hated. I made him smell some and I was right! I bet that's the case with most people that think they hate rye. Rye flour has already played a supporting role in a few loaves I've baked but a full on pumpernickel or NY deli rye would be nice.
Right now my bread book collection consists of Local Bread, Bread, Bread Baker's Apprentice and Professional Baking. I haven't broken in Local Bread yet so maybe I'll have to make something from it this weekend.
Any bread I buy ends up in the freezer because I can't eat it fast enough. So if I buy it, I usually stick with bagels, english muffins, etc. So I just grab it at DeKalb Farmer's Market. The sourdoughs have great staying power though. Once I feel like I have working with white flour sourdoughs down I'll move to the trickier whole grain sourdoughs. I had a sandwich recently at Dynamic Dish that was on a nice whole wheat sourdough, but other than that I haven't run across any particularly good bread. But I haven't really been looking either. Time for some "research".
Oh, and we're practically neighbors...EAV here!