occidental's blog

Hi all, I've been enjoying all your posts over the last week or so, it looks like many of you produced great breads for the holidays.  I did some baking over the holidays I need to catch up on blogging about.  I was away from home so in other words, away from the mixer, the baking stone, my arsenal of flours and the sourdough I am used to working with.  Add to that new brotforms I received for Christmas and you don't know what will happen.  Thankfully I have been reading up here at the fresh loaf and this gave me the opportunity to experiment with new methods and get out

Over the past weekend I thought I'd get into one of my books that I haven't baked from yet, "Bread" by Jeffrey Hammelman.  Being a sourdough fanatic I decided to start with a sourdough and selected the Vermont sourdough, which appears to be one of Hammelman's standbys.  I had great results with the formula and this bread may become one of my favorites if I can repeat the results.  I followed the formula fairly close, however following the mix the dough felt a bit on the dry side and I added about a tablespoon of water.  Once the dough had a chance to autolyse and I did t

Prompted by ehanners [url=http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/14918/shiaoping039s-chocolate-sdmy-take] post [/url] and great looking loafs I baked Shiao Ping's [url=http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/13543/chocolate-sourdough-chad-robertson039s-way] Chocolate Sourdough [/url] earlier this week.  I followed the formula pretty close and was pleased with the results.  I went with 2 small and one larger boule.

I baked the buckwheat batard from Leader's Local Breads yesterday.  This is my third or fourth attempt at this bread, and by far the most sucessful.  The first time I tried this bread I was unaware of the errors in the formula (if you do a search of the site you will find posts on the errors of this book) and ended up experimenting just trying to get a buckwheat starter that I could work with.  The flavor is so unique that I did not give up and have come up with a formula that works for me.  For the buckwheat levain I used 75 grams of my liquid levain that is approximate

Inspired by Txfarmer's post ( http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/14636/auvergne-rye-baguette-bacon ) last week I baked Leaders Auvergne Rye with Bacon today.  I didn't have the really open crumb txfarmer had but I'm pleased with the results.  These loaves were proofed in the fridge overnight which, if anything else developed a good 'skin' that made scoring easy.  I expected more of a bacon flavor - I'd say there is a hint of flavor but not much more - which is disapointing after adding seven slices

I thought I'd post the resluts from yesterday's baking and see if I can figure out how to post pictures, so here goes.  This is the French bread from Ed Wood's "Classic Sourdoughs"  I don't use this book as much as others in the library but the timetable of the formula worked with my Friday / Saturday schedule.  The crust is nice and crispy and I did get some nice fractured crackles as soon as they came out of the oven.  Oven spring wasn't quite as good as I'd like and as usual, the biggest challenge for me is getting a good score.  Enjoy.

Hey folks.  I've been reading posts at this site for a very long time (years?) and finally decided to sign up.  It's certainly been a good resource for me to learn from and improve my baking.  I have had a few sourdough cultures for a while now and that is what I really enjoy baking with - it all just seems like a big science experiment that you get to enjoy eating when you are done with it!  I've recently relocated from the east side of Oregon to the west side and the rainy season is looking to be the bread baking season for me.