breadforfun's blog

About a month ago I wrote about my attempts to reproduce a Pane di Altamura that I tasted on a visit to Italy.  For the past few weeks I have been working on the formula and on my technique, and I’m happy to post my most recent results, which are much closer to the original look I was after.  I researched the techniques a bit more and found some information I had missed the first time around.  The key one was that I had not achieved sufficient gluten development. 

Hamelman's 5-grain Levain is one of our favorite breads.  My wife and I always have some on hand in the freezer (it freezes quite well), ready to toast a slice for breakfast or for a sandwich.  It also lends itself to all kinds of variations since it is easy to modify the ingredients and relative amounts of the soaker.  I have used cracked rye (as called for in the original recipe) and have also had success with bulghur wheat.  This time, inspired by this post earlier this year, I tried it with freek

It began innocently enough, as these things often do.  Ever since I started baking in earnest several years ago I have been intrigued with Pane di Altamura.  Not that I knew exactly what it was, mind you, but the name appeared in many breads that had the golden glow of rich butter in the crumb from the durum wheat.  I was able to buy loaves from several local bakers, most notably Acme Bread, to sample.  These are good breads!  I started experimenting with various formulae and making my own.  Il Fornaio, Peter Reinhart’s Bread Baker’s Apprentice, Amy’s Breads, D

It's been a while since I last posted, so I wanted to share some photos from this weekend's bakes.  A small get together with some friends always inspires me to bake a mix of some new breads and some standards. Clockwise from the left are: Royal Crown's Tortano (from Glezer's Artisan Baking in America), a caramelized onion focaccia (made with flour I brought back from Italy last fall), two boules of Pane di Altamura (more on this later) and three loaves of my go-to spelt sourdough.

I haven't posted in a while due to a busy travel schedule and family obligations. When I finally returned a few weeks ago I wanted to try out a few formulas from Robertson's latest book, Tartine 3. His combinations of ingredients and use of porridge (think cooked soaker) are very intriguing. 

It has been a while since I posted, although I have been baking regularly.  For New Years I made a few breads and thought I would add my voice to those who have had wonderful success with David's posting of the SFBI Miche on TFL.  When I first started baking sourdough breads I was totally intrigued by the photo of a large miche on the cover of Reinhart's Bread Bakers Apprentice.  I spent months trying to master it, with only moderate success.  But an attraction to the miche loaf has stayed with me, and I real

A few weeks ago I wrote about this formula, and after many suggestions from readers out there, I followed up with two bakes.  This post shows the outcome when including all the flours in the long autolyse, based on suggestions from Khalid and David.  Essentially the method was the same as previous with these two exceptions: for bake 2, the autolyse included all the water and all the flours as listed plus 3 gm salt, and for bake 3 the salt was eliminated in the autolyse and the overall hydration w

Just a short note to share some recent bakes.  We love Hamelman's 5-grain levain - it's flavorful, moist, healthy, and it freezes well.  We always keep a loaf in the freezer, sliced and ready to toast for spreading with (choose your topping: cream cheese, yogurt cheese, jams) for breakfast.  It also makes a great sandwich bread.  I follow the basic recipe from Bread (1st edition - I don't know how it compares to the recent release), with just a few small additions.

There has been lots of discussion here and elsewhere (notably Ken Forkish in FWSY and Ian in his Ars Pistorica blog) on the benefits of long autolyse.  I thought I would do a side by side comparison to see what the difference in taste is, since, after all, that's the main reason we all bake so much.  Just for fun, I also wanted to try a more complex levain.  I have been using a simple straight wheat levain that I maintain at around 100% hydration.  After reading posts by Tom (Toad.de.b) and