Just wanted to say THANKS!
I found this site a couple of months ago and have learned so much! I finally signed up today to answer a question about Swedish limpa. I also signed up so I could say thank you to all those who've shared their expertise. With the help of tons of advice from posters here, I have achieved new heights with my bread baking!
I've made bread for many years, but mostly made a simple French bread from The 60 Minute Gourmet that was made in a food processor. It was better than ordinary store bread but not close to good bakery quality. About a year ago I got more serious about figuring out how to make really good bread at home. I bought and studied BBA and Bread by Hammelman.
But it was here that I learned to appreciate and *understand* the techniques in those books: poolish, autolyse, frisage, hand mixing, french fold, a cooler more patient rise, and gentle handling. Yesterday for a party and today so we'd have bread too I made Hammelman's Pain Rustique (made with King Arthur Special Patent Flour plus 6 Tblsps of toasted wheat germ).
I couldn't be happier with the results. Take a look
I couldn't be more thrilled and just want to say thanks to so many here!
Now, we're going to make some shrimp in garlic sauce to enjoy this bread!
You've done a super job - your bread looks wonderful!
Be proud of yourself - and welcome to TFL!
Your story is what this site is all about. I'm so glad you decided to join and share your success with all of us. We all look forward to seeing more of your bread making. You picked my 2 favorite books to help you along. Welcome!
Eric
beautiful! im new to this site too and im trying to get that lovely bloom you got on your loaves. the name of your loaves sounds perfect, could you possibly share the recipe? thanks.
by the way what did you use to score?
Beautiful loaves.
Welcome to the site!
The loaves looks wonderful inside and out! --Pamela
Thanks all for your encouragement. I am indeed pretty proud of these loaves. And they tasted great too:-)
I realized after I'd posted I forgot to say I'd learned about how to score from this site too! A 30 degree angle is *close* to the bread. And, keep it smooth and make the cut fast. I did have to go back and touch up a couple of places where the knife kind of skipped on the dough.
I used a 10 inch chef's knife that has a very thin and narrow flexible blade. It's the sharpest knife in the house. Carbon steel so I have to remember to wash and dry it immediately.
As to sharing the recipe, I haven't figured out the protocol for that. I made it as published in Hammelman's "Bread" book, Pain Rustique, p.111. Is it okay to post recipes from copyrighted books?
The one change I made is that I use 20% germ flour as described in Lederer's "Bread Alone". Essentially you put in roughly 1 Tblsp of wheat germ for every cup of flour. So when I weighed the flour I included 6 generous Tblsp of wheat germ in the final dough flour. I didn't put the germ in the poolish because I thought I saw something somewhere about germ possibly tearing gluten strands and I figured I'd just put it all in the final mix.
Barbara
is fine as long as you give proper credit to the author. Beautiful loaves!
Betty
Nice to meet you here. As you have already found out, this is a great forum for bread enthusiasts.
Looking forward to more of your baking.
Gosia