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While I enjoy a variety of breads, the San Joaquin Sourdough remains my “go to” bread. It's easy to fit into a busy schedule. It uses few ingredients. It always tastes delicious. It's wonderful freshly baked but also makes great toast, French toast, garlic bread and croutons for salads or onion soup. It is almost as good after being frozen as fresh. What's not to like?

This has been a very baking intensive weekend and I love it!!

Looks like summer has decided to pay London a visit, we had a nice and sunny day yesterday, a perfect day to make a fruit sourdough. If I start early enough, it will give me a whole day to proof the dough, warm room temperatures to speed up the fermentation, some sugar and fruit in the dough to get things going and to be ready to bake at the end of the night.

The recipe provides an icing on the biscotti.   Wonderful.   Sounds good.    But in my application the cold biscotti absorbs the icing.   The icing is not cold but it is warm.   Is there something I should add to it??    I want the frosting to cake and be visible on the outside of the biscotti.

Frosting
1 cup confectionary sugar
3 1/2 tablespoons milk
2 drops of lemon juice
2 drops of extract (of your choice)
1 tablespoon orange juice
Zest of the orange

I just finished a week at SFBI taking their whole grain bread class.  We made about 20 different kinds of bread;  they were all good and many were outstanding.  There were lots of interesting shapes, and we used many add-ins, such as dried pears, nuts, seeds and sprouted wheat berries.  This was the third week-long class I've taken there, and I'm starting to be able to work more efficiently and keep up with the more experienced students.  As usual, there was a mixture of home bakers and professionals.  It was a very productive week and I'm becoming more certain

Two loaves underway this weekend - Hamelman's Pain au Levain, and Hamelman's Pain au Levain with Whole-Wheat Flour - both use a stiff levain which I hadn't done before, so I made enough to do a good-sized loaf for each. 

My starter was calling out to me and I couldn’t decided what type of bread I should make when I got home after work. I’ve noticed red chillies sitting on my kitchen shelf and remembered that I had some fine corn meal somewhere in the cupboard – corn and chilli bread it is!!

Mixed it up last night after work, shaped it around midnight before going to bed and baked it this morning. Didn’t get a very strong corn smell while it was baking – the corn flavour is quite mild, crumb is very soft and it is very very tasty.

Recently, I decided it was time to go back to trying my hand at some loaves using the ADY that's stored in my downstairs freezer. The first recipe that I'm working on is Pioneer Bread from the Kansas Wheat Commission's web site.

http://www.kswheat.com/recipes.php?id=122

Hi - well using my usual make up dough - I made a pizza - awful day - argueing with people - got home, had nothing in the house - thought hmmmm tuna - tomatoes - flour = pizza :) 

and it came out nicely - I think I'll use a bit semolina flour in there next time - I noticed on the 2nd one - that if you fold it and roll it a few times, you get those lovely big pockets of air bubbles - I like them :D 

I made a video of how I make bread - I'll get that uploaded soon. 

Light Rye, Caraway, and Emulsified Raisin
Yeast Water Loaf

 Updated: 110615-1100 Added Summary Table of the 3 loaves at the very end of this blog

For the initial two loaves,
see these link:s:

Last month, while experimenting with durum flour, I hacked together a loaf that turned out to be surprisingly tasty.   Fortunately when I'm hacking around, I'm disciplined enough to write things down just in case.    Yesterday, I made it again, with a few minor changes, and it came out more or less the same as last time, so I'm declaring it a keeper.