My wife and I recently aquirred an interest in baking Foccacia. We have made some screamin' loaves but when we compare them to a certain loaf we purchase at Trader Joe's.... we are lacking. Trader Joe's loaf is filled with large holes. That is a characteristic we love but we are not able to reproduce the holes. The recipe we use for the dough is 3 cups of bread flour, combo of .75 cup water and .25 cup of white wine at 120 degrees poured over 2.25 teaspoons of active dry yeast, to the liquid we add.....one T of olive oil.....one T of honey....and a teaspoon of Kosher salt. We let it rise once, punch it down, then let it rise again, then shape it into foccacia loaf and bake at 450 for 13 minutes.

Does anyone out there know what we are doing wrong? We only produce bread with tiny holes. It tastes awesome, but we want to know the difference. How do we make big holes?

Help......

I've been baking bread for years now with moderate success, I'm certainly not an expert, but lately I've been having the most frustrating trouble.  I can not get my yeast to activate.  I've tried everything, checking the exact temp of my water, adding sugar, buying new yeast(two times!), trying bottled water, and using bowls made of glass instead opf ceramic.  No matter what, the yeast just sinks to the bottom of the bowl in a grainy murky mess.  It's quite depressing.  What could I be doing wrong?  Is my house inhabited by some sort of no-rise spirit?  Help!

I recently inherited (pinched, I mean) a beautiful antique wooden bread kneading bowl from my mother. I've recently begun to start making bread, so the timing was fortuitous. My mom tells me it's very old, she and dad got it for a wedding gift (40 years ago!). She used it when I was a kid for salad and serving. It's in good condition, without splits or cracks from drying out... except for the worm holes....

The bowl has been in storage for at least 10 years because at some point something burrowed into it and created wormholes... This was before the all-knowing internet, so mom tried to repair it the best way she could. She filled the holes with some kind of wood filler. It didn't work so well. When I got it, the glue was sort of chunky and seperating. I scraped it off the best I could using warm water, vinegar, my fingernails, and the side of a fork (gently).

I'm left with what you see now. It's pretty smooth in texture, but there's a lot of discoloration remaining. Much of the lightness at the bottom is the wood coming through... that's fine and will fade with more use, cleaning, curing. The other lightness is from the glue/filler itself. The worm holes are the distinct squiggly things. The wood flller/glue (of unknown origin) is really hard to get off. Vinegar barely makes a dent. I've scraped off all i can, now i'm just smearing it around. I read that laquer thinner and steel wool will remove it promptly, but I'd like to remove all the glue in a foodsafe fashion. If it comes out of the wormholes that's great (character, you know) or not... whatever! I'd just like to polish it up and use it for whatever i can, even if it's just a centerpeice. Ideas?

Hi all. I see disposable scalpels for sale on Ebay. They are quite cheap and I would imagine very sharp. Do you think these would work well for scoring dough? Thanks. Dave