Rye humor
I'm wiped out tonight. Had a great weekend taking the kids camping for the first time, rafting down the Sandy River, and generally enjoying summertime.
Nevertheless, I baked. Well? No, not at all. I made a mess of most everything I touched, but they still tasted quite good.
(Perhaps that could be a a new motto for the site: "Artisan Baking: Because even your mistakes are tasty!")
I tried a bunch of recipes from Daniel Leader's soon-to-be-released book Local Breads: Sourdough and Whole-Grain Recipes from Europe's Best Artisan Bakers [1]. As I said, I screwed them all up, but that isn't the books fault, that was me thinking "Oh, I can make it down the river in time to not overproof the loaves." I was wrong. I also mixed up my whole wheat starter and my rye starter, so my final rye and whole wheat breads ended up tasting quite a bit like one another.
Picture time.
Simple French Bread Loaves
Polish Rye Bread
Inside the Rye (with Caraway)
I'll write up a real review in the next few days, but I definitely think the Daniel Leader book is a winner. Solid recipes, nice design and typography, very accessible. Definitely a good one, and going to give Peter Reinhart's new book [2] a run for bakers interested in whole grain baking's money this fall.
I also baked an Orange Honey Prune bread from Beth Hensberger's The Bread Bible [3]. Convenient since, as zainaba22 [4] pointed out, the theme of this month's bread baking day [5] is bread with fruit.
Very good stuff. I'll post the recipe in the next couple of days.