For about two years previous I had been making bread for groups of college students as a part of the college student outreach at my church. Every Sunday morning I would bring pounds of retarded yeast fermented dough to the church kitchen, prep it on site, and bake it off for our college lunch. I was pretty proud of the formula I used for it, mostly this was because it was mine. I chose the hydration, the fermentation technique, and the shaping and baking of it. And it always came out beautifully every time. Later on, i even started fermenting it with my sourdough starter. 

Fast forward five months. In addition to baking off a spiked sourdough boule, we would be making pane francese, a rustic dough that we would be forming into baguettes. It was made with a high proportion of biga, and a high hydration, around 70.5%. We ended up putting 6 folds into it as it dribbled around on the bench, then it would be shaped, proofed, and baked. It was supposed to be an exceptionally beautiful bread with a wide, open crumb. And it was.

Sometime after Chef showed us how to shape the loaves, and before his loaves went into the oven I recognized something interesting about the loaves. That shaping technique was the exact same one I used for my church batards. I thought this was intriguing and dismissed it. Curiosity bit me a few seconds later as I decided to check the exact hydration...70.5%. Another interesting thing. And to top it all off you use biga to give it great flavor and texture.

And then it was that I realized that for the past two years I had been making pane francese. Its amazing that by thinking about how I would make good bread, and implementing those factors, you can come up with a bread is very very old. 

Well, I mentioned some time ago that I was considering attending the bread program at the French Culinary Institute in New York City. Well, in an attempt to kick-start my career and get out of Ohio, I signed up and off I went. So here I am in Chinatown with aching feet and a big bag of baguettes and batards. I mentioned originally that I was going to blog my experience, and I have begun to do so.

The blog isn't all about bread, but bread is what ties it all together. I'll be doing restaurant reviews, bakery reviews, general NYC fun, and updates on my classes and progress. There are not yet, but there will be soon, pictures to accompany all of these things. Additionally, the layout of the blog needs some work but I'm on it and should have it all worked out soon.

I invite you to stop by my blog, have a read, and please, please leave comments. I will answer any questions I can regarding formulas and techniques if you leave them in the comments section, and I can always ask my instructor things that you wanted to know in the guise of me pretending it was my question! I hope he's not reading this. Sorry, chef!

Thanks, and may your ovens always heat true!

Corey

Hello Fresh Loaf!

I'm writing to invite everyone here to read my blog! I am a beginner artisan home baker, and I've been learning by myself through books, youtube videos, and experience. I have been doing some research with several famous baking books and I'll be posting my reviews for them. Check it out! mariasgoldenoven.blogspot.com. I'll soon write more substantial posts here as well.

I love this community!

Hi, everybody!

Maybe this is a bit silly, since I've already exchanged messages with a few of your wonderful selves and posted my own question about how best to bake bread on a Coleman camp stove - and I received so many fantastic ideas and suggestions - but I hadn't really given an Official Introduction; essentially, I'm a writer and stumbling but devoted baker living in Hungary, and I've been so enthralled by the whole Fresh Loaf community.  

My husband suggested I post a link to my blog here on the website.  Since I'm a writer, I end up posting largely a bunch of diminutive short stories, but some of these stories are actually inspired by bread, of all things (!), and I've posted recipes, including my rendition and a fiction for Moroccan khoubz flatbread, the Fresh Loaf pita recipe and the camp stove method I used for it (but with full credit and a link to this website, don't worry!), and most recently a fiction and my recipe for basic pizza dough with my own ridiculous pizza design and toppings.  

Here's a link:

http://erzsebetgilbert.blogspot.com

It's not really epical, I think, but it's got baking and some writerly absurdities, so if it lends anybody a few ideas or a bit of entertainment, I'll be glad enough... but in the meantime, I just have to give everybody at the Fresh Loaf a most enormous thank-you for all your generosity, help, ideas, and general virtuoso kitchen skills!  Until later, blessings,

Erzsebet

Rather than creating a new topic each time I want to post messages and photos of what is coming out of my oven most recently, I'm going to try blogging. Maybe I'm the last person on the planet to set up a blog, but this is a first for me, so here goes ...

David