Almost every weekend I bake. Lately I've been trying different recipes using my sourdough starter. At other times I baked yeasted artisan breads and sandwich breads. But one thing has remained constant: almost every time I have the oven heated for baking I make a batch of banana bread. I can safely say that I've made more batches of banana bread than any other bread.
Last night I tried out the Casatiello from "The Bread Baker's Apprentice". It's a kind of brioche with cheddar cheese and bits of sausage in it.
It recommends using hard cured salami, but instead I picked up a roll of summer sausage and sauted it. It worked beautifully.
The bread is creamy and rich, and extremely satisfying. It takes about 5 hours to make, but is well worth the time and effort.
We had company, and the bread disappeared entirely within two hours.
Tonight I tried using my starter to make a sourdough pizza:
It turned out very good. I was afraid it would be too sour, but the sourness was totally overpowered by the tomato and garlic sauce.
I used something in the ballpark of:
1 cup starter
2 cups bread flour
1 cup water
2 teaspoons salt
I had a bit of extra dough so I made breadsticks too, which are in the foreground.
For the Portlanders reading this site, some interesting news is that A Pizza Scholls moved from the outer westside to SE 47th and Hawthorne (see map).
This place has gotten rave reviews. What they make is really artisan pizza: long, slow rises and nothing but flour, salt, yeast, and water in their dough.
There is an Artisan Bread Festival in Asheville, North Carolina this coming Saturday (the 5th). Among the participants will be Peter Reinhart and Mark Rosenstein. Looks like fun.
Scientists are running tests on a 15 year old British lad who has subsisted almost solely on bread and jam. I'm no fan of the low carb diets, but this is taking things to extremes...
The Nigerian government is trying to introduce a new flour blend that is made up of 10% domestic cassava. The chairman of the Nigerian Master Bakers Association is quoted as saying that "The policy is not only going to put more money in the pockets of Nigerian cassava farmers, but it will drastically reduce un-employment, urban violence, armed robbery and open up a new agro-industrial transformation for the entire country with cassava as its base." Strong stuff.
Today's Detroit Free has a recipe for an Herbed Cheese Bread and a Rosemary Focaccia. Yum.
If you've ever made French bread at home, you've made pizza dough. Traditional, DOC (Denominazione de Origine Controllata) designated pizza dough from Italy contains nothing but flour, salt, water, and yeast.
The dough at most neighborhood pizza joints contains a few more ingredients. Fats are added to make the dough more supple, and sugars are added to feed the yeast and give the bread a touch of sweetness.
Hi,
Can i bake doughnuts instead of frying them? If so will i get good results? what about the ideal tempreture of the oven?
:-?
I've been mucking about with whole wheat loaves for a while, but doing them all wheat has for the longest time basically meant winding up with a brick. Which can look very cool, but doesn't really satisfy the sandwich need.
Of course, most of the flour I tried...Pilsbury, Hodgson's Mill, etc. was really Graham Flour, which is very chunky, and while flavorful, has a very low gluten quotient. The only survivable way to make it into tolerable wheat bread was to do a 70/30 ratio of bread flour/wheat flour, or even higher on the bread flour side.
Recently I've wondered, short of getting up at 2 AM to begin making the dough, what is the best way of having a fresh, hot loaf of bread ready first thing in the morning?
I've experimented with delayed fermentation techniques a couple of times in the past week, and been pretty successful with it. Read more for info on the techniques I've tried as well as the recipe for this wonderful buttermilk bread.
Time & Temperature Redux
As I talked about in Lesson Three, two of the most important variables the baker has control over are time and temperature. Longer, slower rises using less yeast result in a more flavorful loaf of bread. Refrigeration is the most common way to retard the rise. Most bakers agree that rustic bread doughs with few ingredients beyond flour, yeast, salt, and water benefit the most from being allowed to rise in the refrigerator overnight, though other breads may benefit as well.
Two interesting bread related stories in the news:
The South Dakota State State Affairs Committee approved a bill 8-1 that will list the American Indian staple Fry Bread as an officially designated symbol that represent South Dakota's diversity. Both residents of South Dakota cheered this news.
Also, there are more indications that the low-carb diet craze may be beginning to fade. About time.
As Lewis Black said on The Daily Show: "The Atkins diet tells us that bread is bad. Bread is evil. Huh. So apparently, we've been doing it all wrong SINCE THE DAWN OF CIVILIZATION!"
