I have read so many pieces about this bakery or that where they say this oven makes so many batches over a certain period or this bakery holds the record for consecutive batches...

So, having not been trained by a school or a professional baker, how big is a batch? Is it 2, 10, 20 or what? For me 10 loaves in a row at 2 pounds each was a great workout kneading but the time really flies when you are having that much fun!

Happy baking!

Friends of ours are fond of panettone, so I thought that I would try making some for them as a Christmas gift.  After much browsing, I decided to use the recipe for Il Panettone Milanese, located here: http://italianfood.about.com/library/rec/blr0946.htm.  One of the things that drew me to this one is that it uses a naturally-yeasted biga, instead of commercial yeast.  I figured that my sourdough starter (which isn’t especially sour) would yield a good biga and it did.

Baked my first pannetone yesterday.  Rose fine, looked and tasted great but the texture was a bit to "cakey" and a little heavy.  I was expecting it to be lighter and more spongy.  After adding the fruit the dough was a bit wetter than I am used to but after the first rise it had a nice  stringy structure with lots of bubbles.  Second rise was a little slower than I thought it should be (about 3 hours).  Both rises were at 78F.  The recipe called for all purpose flour but I wonder if I should have used bread flour. 

 What else should I do to get it more spongy?

Makowiec isn't, strictly speaking, a holiday bread. But it is a classic Polish dessert or tea bread that is commonly served around the holidays. And it is delicious.

Almost all of the moisture in this dough comes from the sour cream, butter, and eggs. There is no primary fermentation: it is one rise and in the oven. This suprised me enough that I verified the recipe in 3 different Polish cookbooks. All of them used this same technique.

This week, one of my colleagues volunteered our team at work to host the monthly Happy Hour. Thanks, bud. Anyway, it was a Thanksgiving theme and since I'm "The Bread Guy," they wanted me to bake something. I thought it would be a good excuse to convert the Bread Baker's Apprentice's Cranberry Walnut Celebration Loaf into whole wheat. So I did. Here's how it turned out:

Browsing the news feed led me to this recipe for a yeasted pumpkin bread from the World bread day link. I have slightly adapted it and it turned out well although I can't say it is too exciting - a useful recipe for using up an excess of pumpkin I guess.

It is slighltly more orange than the pictures imply with a good caramelly chewy crust and is quite moist but the crumb is a bit tight - although it slices quite well.

I bought a Corona Mill and I got it for really cheap, so even if all I can get out of it is cornmeal and peanut butter, I won't be disappointed. However, I was expecting to get at least passable flour if I ran it through a couple times. I am using hard red wheat from my local health food store, and grinding it several times. I end up with meal that has some flour in it, but is mostly sand sized grains of grain ;) I am wary of tightening the coarseness adjustment too much and damaging the burrs. Any advice?

I'd love to use this one for a while before I commit to a more expensive mill, so I'd appreciate help figuring this out. But my next step will be to get a better mill. I am very tempted to get the Family Living mill because I can get the adapter for my Kitchen Aid and can also get the rollers and flakers later. The next option that I like (probably the best) is the Country Living Grain Mill. I like that because it is beatuiful, well respected, and durable. It doesn't adapt to other things as well, but it would certainly turn out the flour I need! I don't think that I would be able to justify any of the models that are more expensive than the Country Living mill, so it won't help to recommend the $3k models :)

In case you are thinking that there is no way that particular sequence of dots can be connected, stay with me. You may want to send for the nice men in the white coats when I'm done explaining, but until then, think of it as a case study in aberrant psychology.

It began, innocently enough, with Floyd's suggestion (challenge?) to submit some ideas for harvest breads. Some of the things that I have long associated with Autumn are the late-season vegetables like winter squash, pumpkins, and parsnips. Squash can add moisture and texture to breads, as well as a low-key sweetness. Combine that with something savory, like sage, and you have the flavor foundation for a knock-out loaf of bread. Ah, you begin to see where this is going . . .

We had guests over for Saturday night dinner. Here's two of the poolish baguettes I baked, along with a very buttery Brioche that we ate for dessert with lemon curd and raspberries.

Just wondering if anyone has ever made an Italian or Greek braided bread
for Easter that has Dyed eggs baked in it?
Thanks