Blog posts

Hi, it's raining here in San Diego, how about where you are? Here are some photos of things I've made in the last couple of weeks. Last weekend, we had our neighbors over for dominoes, and I made a king cake. They're from New Orleans (pre-Katrina), so I thought I'd bake the traditional Mardi Gras cake and see how close it got to the real thing. They said, 'yep, that's it'. I thought it came out rather dry, but I guess that's why you dump a box or so of powdered sugar icing on it. The recipe I used is here.

Tangy Yogurt Bread: 

http://i12etu.com/2008/02/tangy-yogurt-bread.html

3 c. proofed starter

1 cup plain yogurt

2 tsp salt

4 cups bread flour

Does anyone grow & use kefir...I've been growing it for 10 years, or so...it's a wonderful product & it's very easy to grow!   I've made "cream cheese" & "sour cream"...it's a wonderful substituted for buttermilk in baked goods & I've made sourdough starters with it.  If you'd like to know more about it, I recommend this site: http://users.chariot.net.au/~dna/kefirpage.html it's everything you'd want to know about kefir!

Having a young son is hard on an budding bread maker. So, I've relegated myself to some late night baking. I just pulled this loaf out at 1am. It's just a basic loaf of white bread variation 2 (i.e. liquid milk instead of powdered) from my new newly purchased copy of "The Bread Baker's Apprentice".

I donbt know what I am doing at the moment, but the last 3 batches of bread I have made have sucked.

Seriously sucked.

Undercooked, no oven spring, dense, the only thing I can say is that they were tasty enough.

I tried the 5 mins a day master recipe and I didnt like it. I used whole wheat and that may have been the problem but I found it waaaaaaaaaay toooooo salty for my linking.

I made couronne Bordelaise for this month's BreadBakingDay ("shape" theme; deadline tomorrow so all you bread-shapers get yours in quick if you want to participate!)

Detailed instructions here: http://www.wildyeastblog.com/2008/01/31/shape-crown-couronne/

Nancy Silverton's Sourdough Whole Wheat BreadSourdough Whole Wheat Bread

As I conducted my home ash content tests during the latest home milling and sifting session, a sourdough starter was accidentally started. The home ash content test involves mixing 5 grams of flour with 100 grams of distilled water, stirring it periodically, and measuring the conductivity of the water until it stabilizes, about 24 hours later. All of that time was spent at about 69F, the temperature of my kitchen in the winter. I noticed a familiar smell, something like yogurt, that was reminiscent of the early stages of some of the starter staring experiments I have conducted in the past.