Have you ever developed an original recipe? Most people think it is some long drawn out process, but remember you are not Pillsbury test kitchen with thousands of dollars and test kitchen cooks to address ever question or issue.

When you find a recipe that is good, reliable and consistent...that's a keeper. If it is not, you have a couple of choices. Rework the recipe, refine it so it works, put it in the "to-do" pile for a later date or toss it. What you do depends on how much time you want to devote to recipe and only you can answer that question.

As you test, and retest, you will find a pattern to the process and it will fall into an everyday groove. I would suggest that you schedule time each month to test or at least review the recipes you are working on. Remember it's not just about recipes, this is a listing of products you can enter into contest, feature in a magazine or newspaper, include in a future cookbook or sell in your home-based bakery. When your bakery is up and running and a local journalist ask...may we have a recipe to attach to your story? What will you say, no they are all secret...

Always have a dozen or so recipes that are uniquely yours that you don't mind sharing...just in case.

You may also want to place a recipe in your marketing materials...not that people will prepare them necessarily, but to show you are open to sharing your knowledge and skill. You are a great baker and this is not the time to be shy!

Now with that said, you don't have to give out your best recipes, just things you don't mind sharing. Give it some thought.

There is an old saying, there is nothing new under the sun, and it is so true. It is easy to add a new twist to something, but food companies spend millions to create new products, it's a real challenge; but every once and a while an independent culinary innovator comes up with a unique and inspiring food, spice or taste. Take a look at what is missing out there on the grocery shelves... get creative. I would love to see an alternative to buttercream frosting, but I have not yet figured out what it should be, something sweet, creamy and not made with all that fat.

I was inspired by David (dmsnyder) and his 5 hour baguettes. I needed a sandwich bread that was as lean as I could get it but was still very much soft crusted and soft of crumb. I've found it, I think, by slightly modifying the 5 hour baguette idea and adding one enrichment: olive oil.

Stephanie’s Simple Bread
Makes 1 small loaf

225g AP or bread flour
10g rye flour
15g white whole wheat flour
3/4 teaspoon instant yeast
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon olive oil
170g water

Mix ingredients in the bowl for your stand mixer until you form a shaggy mass. Mix, on low, for 5 minutes, then increase speed to medium for 3 or 4 more. I left this in a clean bowl for 75 minutes for a first rise, folding at 25 and 50 minutes, and 60 minutes for a second rise. Shaped carefully and proofed for 40 minutes, scored, and spritzed with water. Baked for 30 minutes at 425 degrees.

I posted the recipe on my blog, too.

So thank you David. Thanks also have to go out to Susan of Wild Yeast for inspiration due to the fact that I was browsing the Wild Yeast Blog when I thought about how good a simple bread would be with the locally homemade ham salad I bought today.

Does anyone have an authentic recipe for Porketta?  All my online searches seem to yield the same two recipes (posted below). Any input would be of great value.  I will probably take the best of both recipes and combine, unless anyone can point me in the right direction.

most common recipe found all over the web:

• 2 pound boneless pork loin roast
• 3 tablespoons dill seed
• 1 tablespoon fennel seed
• 1/2 teaspoon oregano
• 1 teaspoon lemon pepper
• 1/4 teaspoon onion powder
• 1/4 teaspoon garlic powder

and this recipe which I think was from food network

• 1 (6-pound) boneless pork butt roast
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 2 tablespoons freshly ground black pepper
• 12 cloves garlic, chopped
• 1 cup chopped fresh parsley
• 1/2 cup fennel seeds
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 1 fennel bulb, finely chopped, feather tops saved for garnish

There'll be a better write-up on my blog,
mentalexperimental.org, but I wanted to thank Floyd for a good starter recipe. I'm still working on modifying this one. I think that I have the general consistency of the bread down that I want, but I want a bit more tang. I think that there may have to be a sourdough component to really get it where I want it to be. But that's a completely new bread.

This is Floyd's recipe with a few modifications. The first is adding a bit more sour cream. The second was adding cheddar cheese instead of chives. The third is the addition of half & half in the dough and the mashed potatoes.

I think that getting a stand mixer will help me with this type of bread the most. I mixed for 8 or so minutes on speed 2 and then folded twice during the bulk fermentation, giving it an hour at the end to come to full bulk. The crumb is light, fluffy, and very tender.

I'm writing the recipe on the blog now. I wanted to share the photo because I'm so proud of how this one turned out. :)

I have tinkered around and created a spreadsheet for myself that is sort of a recipe, sort of a baking log, and an ingredient/baker's percentage calculator all in one.  It has a place to list the ingredient names and then you can input the weight of each item in grams (you will have to do those conversions yourself until I have worked on that part of it) and it will calculate the baker's percentage for you. Or... if you only have the baker's percentage numbers you can enter those in and tell it how much flour you want to use or how much you want the final dough to weigh and it will tell you how much of each ingredient to use.  It will even work for a preferment (that's the correct term right?) although you have to be a little tricky to get it to tell you the weights for the preferment ingredients from just the baker's percentage (although it can be done fairly easily). 

There is also a fair bit of space for taking notes and if you can print double sided then it will give you lines for notes on the back too.  What I am doing is entering everything in on the computer, printing it out (landscape), and then I put the printed page into a plastic three ring binder sleeve to protect it and have a way to keep my recipes in one spot in a binder. I take handwritten notes on it each time I make that recipe to document what I did (right or wrong) and just print out more "notes" pages when I need them (Ok I haven't done that yet but once I've baked enough times I will).

There doesn't seem to be a way to host a file like this on here but if anyone knows how or where I can put it up for others to use please let me know.  I would also be glad to have others use this and poke holes in it and (nicely) tell me where/how it is messed up.  I've tried to make sure that it works correctly but I'm pretty much a babe in the woods in the baking world so something that makes absolutely no sense at all wouldn't necessarily raise a warning flag for me ;-)

I call it my sBreadsheet :-)

Dave

P.S. I think I am putting this in the right place but not completely sure.

Hi,

Having been on the great quest for that perfect daily bread for my family, I think I'm getting closer.

I've been baking Hamelman's Pain au Levain now and again with mixed reviews from the family.  I recently tried the pain au levain with whole wheat and it has been a massive hit!  The flours here are split between 75% bread flour, 20% whole wheat flour and 5% medium rye.     My starter seems to really love the warmer weather of spring and this dough bursts to life.  I wish I had photos to show you!

One day, due to a cat who needed to be rushed to the vet, the dough sat in the fridge over night and was super!  It seems to be a very forgiving recipe.

I would encourage you to try it if you haven't already!

Cheers,

Tania

PS:  Hope to send pics next time!

Yesterday, on the "Crispier Crust" thread, Eric posted a picture of Susan from SD's latest Onion-Poppy seed bread which looked absolutely gorgeous. I have searched for the recipe but cannot find it. Does anyone have that recipe? Susan? Eric?

Thanks for any help. I would love to be able to give it a try.

Jessica

Has anyone used the recipe for whole wheat sourdough from the Laurel's Kitchen Bread Book?  I am a first time sourdougher and thought I would try this one first because it looked fairly simple, but my loaves would not rise! I had to let them rise 2 to 3 times the usual time to get them to the proper "spongy" stage where they are ready to be deflated.   In the end, my loaves were thick, heavy, and almost unpleasantly sour (I thought this last part might be attributed to the high concentration of bread-per-bite since the loaves did not rise well).  Help! do you think my start is bad? I can't tell because the making of it is so different from other tutorials I've seen, but I honestly wouldn't know the difference anyway. :)

I'm writing a novel about a baker and I think I just blew it.  Near the end of the book, she has about four hours to bake a loaf of bread from "start" (in this case, kneading final dough) to "finish" (in this case, pulling it out of the oven).  She knows nothing about baking at the beginning of the book, and to keep things "authentic" I've been learning along with her. 

So here's my problem.  About fifty pages ago I realized that my character would decide late in the game to use a wild yeast starter.  Genius that I am, I didn't check to see how long it takes to rise/proof a wild yeast loaf.  I found a few hybrid (commercial and wild yeast) recipes, but to keep true to her character, I need to find something that only uses wild yeast starter.

So am I out of luck, or are there short-window recipes out there that use only wild yeast?  Overnight retards and barms are no problem, but she must knead and bake within those four hours!  Help!

Any recipes for batch bread (or batch loaf) as made in Ireland.

AFAIK its known as Plain Bread in Scotland so probably different names around the world.

Its got a hard and dark top-crust. Baked in batches so soft at sides. Here's the best picture I could find on the web.

http://www.irwinsbakery.co.uk/filestore/images/product/280px/nk-half-loaf.jpg