Floydm's blog

Sunday is my birthday. Sunday is also World Bread Day. Coincidence? I think not. After my excessive baking spree last weekend, I had said I wasn't going to bake this weekend. But I may just have to celebrate World Bread Day by putting together a loaf or two.

"Hello, my name is Floyd, and I am a bread-aholic." I went crazy this weekend. Kaiser rolls, a french bread, oatmeal raisin cookies, pumpkin bread, ciabatta, a raspberry cheese braid, honey wheat bread. Not to mention that I made a batch of apple butter, specifically for eating on home baked bread. Next weekend, I've gotta stop. Maybe one or two batches but that is it. Man, I'm pooped.

You know you've got the baking bug bad when you find yourself making a sponge on a Saturday night not even sure what you'd want to bake the next day, just figuring it is a good idea to have one ready. I think I may try a ciabatta again, but who knows? Still, I'm glad to have my poolish handy.

I forgot to mention that I baked kaiser rolls again yesterday. They were mighty tasty, though they still don't look like professional kaiser rolls. I actually like the rough look of them though. Anyone have any kaiser shaping tips?

I tried making the poolish ciabatta from the Hamelman bread book today. I was not paying much attention when I added everything to the mixer and I must have added too much flour or too little water, so it was clear it was not going to be a ciabatta after all. So a french bread loaf it turned out to be. One thing I did do was focus more on the scoring.

I finally bought Jeffrey Hamelman's Bread book the other day. I baked the poolish baguettes from it today and following his instructions on mixing, shaping, scoring, and baking. It was largely successful, though I made a few mistakes. The dough seemed pretty sticky, but Hamelman is correct that folding the dough during rising tightens things up nicely.

Back to work tomorrow. During my week off I managed to bake pain de Provence, bagels, chocolate chip banana bread, kaiser rolls (recipe to come, after I try it a few more times), pain sur poolish, and an apple pie. Not bad consider everything else we did (3 days at the beach, a day hiking, lots of visits to the local playgrounds, and so on).

I've been on vacation this week. Of course I have to be a bakery tourist. I came across Bread & Ocean in Manzanita, Oregon (see map). A nice little place, that makes some interesting sounding breads: fig-walnut bread, potato-rosemary leek bread, spelt bread, german seeded bread, as well as the standard french bagettes and sourdoughs. I tried one of their sweets, an almond-poppy seed bun.

Tomatoes? From the garden.
Basil? From the garden too.
Garlic? Yeah, I grew that in the garden as well.
Cheese? Milked my own cow Ok, I bought that. But it turned out wonderful.

Two baking experiments yesterday. One was a big success, the other a total failure.

The first experiment was tweaking the banana bread recipe. I made two small changes (added a 1/2 a cup of whole wheat flour and a cup of vanilla yogurt) and it was *sooo* good. I want to try it one more time to verify my measurements and then I'll post a recipe and pics.