Blog posts

Howdy everyone. So I'll start out by saying I wasn't entirely happy with this bake, and I used both rice flour and hard white whole wheat, both of which (to my understanding) have lower gluten forming abilities, though I may be incorrect on that.

Hi folks i got around to a bake  this week after 7 weeks holiday, and also being the last week of students at the college, i suggested a loaf based on one that i had seen in The Bourke Street Bakery book, Theirs was roasted Potato and Rosemary, mine was a bit different in that i was going to use 1/3 wholemeal flour, i was also going to use a biga,

i needed to make a 2kg biga, so quickly worked out the quantities of wholemeal flour that i would require and the water to have 2kgs this was simply 100% flour 65% water = 165%  2000g divided by 165 =12.12

I've been baking for a while now - started as a kid, but serious baking and sourdough for about 10 years now. What I love about baking is that I am still learning new things, every week I find something new to try. 

I've created a post to summarise a few things I've picked up over the years - its all my own experience, not scientific or book explained, all I know it works for me. 

Perchè fare il Pane in casa? I motivi sono tanti......

Adoro il Pane, sono felice quando lo impasto, quando lo mangio e soprattutto quando lo condivido.

Questa tipologia di Pane è spesso sulla mia tavola, di facile ed appassionante esecuzione, consistenza e complessità di aromi straordinari.

http://ilchiccoelaspiga.blogspot.it/2014/12/la-spiga-francese.html

A presto, Anna

I just returned from the annual Thanksgiving pilgrimage to North Carolina and needed to make some bread.  I refreshed my trusty AP starter and decided to incorporate some of my freshly milled and sprouted whole wheat flour with some Durum flour and some good old KAF Bread flour.

The results are in and this one is a keeper.  A nice moist and open crumb with the nutty taste of Durum along with the unique flavor of the Sprouted Whole Wheat really makes this one worth baking and eating.

Well, it's been almost 6 months since I last baked any bread.  I made some pizzas during that time, but no bread.  The hot summer months just curb the motivation to get the oven on for hours.  The itch to bake bread got almost as unbearable as all that store bought bread.

So I'm going to attempt to post more frequently, assuming my kids allow me the free time and I can get the photos to post. (As I type this the baby just knocked over my cup of coffee across the table)

hello everyone it's been awhile since my last post but I've still been baking 3-5 loaves a week and have been having more consistent results and I was quite happy with this bake. The formula was fairly simple:

I started the Levain with 20g active and ripe starter, fed 10g of my mother mix (80% AP, 15% WW, 5% RYE) and 10g H2O, then about 6 hrs later fed again 20g mix and 20g h20 and was left to rest until doubled (about 4 more hours).

After a long absence from baking due to visitors, travel and so on, I have gotten away from baking my own bread. With the winter months and some insanely cold weather in these parts it seemed like a good time to fire the oven up. I used 2 Tbs of dehydrated onion and enough water to make the dough plus some which will get absorbed. the soaking water was used in the dough -- of course! As I am in a very dry environment I upped the hydration to 70% and used a little more egg than recommended, but this dough made great tasting buns and was a dream to work.

The nights are getting colder here, my thoughts have been turning to overnight outdoor proofing schemes. 
For this bread, I started with a 45 min. autolyse, then minimal machine mixing in stages. The bulk  ferment was in the five hour range.
The loaves spent the night, seam down in baskets, and coved up inside of a large plastic box outside in the cold.
Outside the temp. dropped to +5c, I suspect that inside the box it was closer to +9.