Floydm's blog

I was walking across the Portland State University campus last week and I noticed this: During the summer, the farmers market happens here. I gather someone must bake during the market. Neat.

I made my pain sur poolish today. I was eyeballing the salt and intentionally added a little more than usual, but I think it overdid it. It wasn't bad, but it just had that puckered look and listlessness it gets when you add too much salt. So it goes.

I rose my sourdough overnight last night, shaped it this morning, and baked it around noon. By the time I got my camera out, one loaf had been devoured and the second was reduced to this: One thing to note: I forgot it and left it in the oven an extra 10 minutes or so. Every time I do this I am pleased with the result. Dark bread is well-baked bread! I also tried the Lavash crackers from the BBA: Eh...

Sylvia Burgos has a podcast dedicated to artisan bread, cheese, and wine. In the latest episode she chats with Peter Reinhart and yours truly. Listen here. And, yes, I know I got the hydration backward. "100% flour, 65% water" it should be. I was tired. Gotta go heat my oven for today's baking.

I just clicked on my profile (I was looking for the sweet potato soup recipe that is on my favorites list), noticed it said "Member for 3 years, 2 hours, " and realized that I started this site three years ago tonight. Pretty cool. The site has done much better than I imagined it would and been, with very few exceptions, a real treat to manage.

I made a few layout changes today. I'm trying to make more efficient use of space without reducing readability. I also enabled user icons. You now can go to "My Account" and upload a small gif or jpeg to represent you. It will show up on any forum or blog posts you make, as well as in your comments. Let me know if you run into any problems.

I made bagels this morning. I forgot that my malt powder had gone bad, so I subbed in brown sugar. Definitely not as authentic, but still quite tasty for a Sunday brunch.

I applied a bunch of system patches, did a server reboot, and upgraded to the latest version of Drupal today. The server took about 5 minutes to come back, which is longer than usual, and just long enough to make me worry that I was going to have to spend the rest of my day emailing back and forth with tech support. Happily, it looks like everything came back fine. Please let me know if you run into any problems.

A couple of recent things I baked Some french bread I put together quickly for a pot of black bean soup. Not world class bread, but great for mopping up the soup. My Christmas Stollen. I used the Peter Reinhart recipe. I changed a few things, like using Amaretto instead of Grand Marnier and dried cranberries instead of raisins. I was very pleased with the results.