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I've been making sourdough for just over two years now, starting when my wife and I moved to Santa Barbara. While out exploring our new city we wandered into a bakery (D'Angelo's Bread) off State St. and had some amazing sourdough. When I got home I got online and fell into a sourdough "rabbit hole" where I discover that all one needed to make his/her own bread was flour and water! I threw together a 50/50 mix and left it on the window seal for a couple days and the yeast bubbles started rising. I have been hooked ever since.

One of the drawbacks of the hearth-style breads such as found in FWSY is that the crusts are tough for little kids to chew. I've been baking a lot of FWSY inspired bread, and so we've stopped buying bread from the store, but that means PB&J sandwiches with "adult" crusts, which means lots of unfinished PB&J carcasses. Alright, a new challenge! How to make kid-friendly sandwich bread using a low-knead, high-hydration dough, as inspired by FWSY?

After last week’s mooshed Altamura shaped loaf we decided not to try to moosh this one.  Lucy wanted to give it another go to try and make amends but she has been acting oddly of late and frankly just can’t be trusted - especially on Earth Day.

Well, it has been a while. Having sufficiently recovered from my broken wrist, I have finally been able to start baking bread again. I have been chronicling my progress on Instagram, but was so excited with this new recipe that I decided to come back and blog about it. I ran across Trevor Wilson on Instagram (I see that he is also here. Hi Trevor!) and was drooling over his yummy loaves and then the video for his Champlain sourdough came up on my YouTube suggestion list. I was intrigued by his technique that I just had to try it!

I've always felt comfortable with cooking--not necessarily good at it, but comfortable--but I never considered myself a baker. In fact, until I began baking bread a year and a half ago, the extent of my baking was throwing the specified ingredients in a hand-me-down Breadman bread-machine, because, well, we had it, and I'm a sucker for new gadgets, even if it's someone else's old gadget. The bread was ok, but it's only real appeal was that we were involved in the process. Unsurprisingly, we didn't use it very often, and I didn't care.

Pane Tipo di Altamura

20 April, 2016

David Snyder

This is the latest bake in my series of attempts to produce a good looking and good flavored Pane Tipo di Altamura. I have continued to make modifications based on my experience to date and the experience and resources shared by other TFL members who are also working on this style of bread.

Are you interested in learning to bake high quality bread in a busy production environment?   Now is your chance. Bread Obsession is offering internships starting at the beginning of May and running through August for 2-4 weeks each.  We are a young and growing artisan bread company.   We sell to restaurants and stores, and will be participating in the biggest farmers market in Massachusetts at Copley Place in Boston.  You will work alongside us on all bakery tasks including mixing, shaping, loading the big oven, and keeping the bakery tidy and clean.

"I Got Back Jack and did it again..."

Once more with my SJSD inspired rye baguettes with caraway seeds.  But with a new twist and the formula sheet, now that it has been "time tested".  For a small change of direction I decided to make these as Gros Baguettes, 450g each.  So they are pretty hefty, and I wouldn't expect to see these in many bakeries.  But it worked.  The formula:

SJSD based Rye with Caraway Seeds

So my virginal sourdough starter finally got big and healthy enough for me to actually use it last Friday. In a frenzy to use my new pet, I baked two loaves on Saturday. The first was a "traditional" idea of a basic sourdough loaf, with a lot of wholegrains. If I recall, the flour was about 50/30/20 between white, wholemeal and wholemeal spelt flour. It was on the low end of what I've learned to be acceptable hydration, mainly because I made the rookie error of spending too much time handling the bread and, worried about stickiness, kept adding more flour.

Hey, it's a baking site; enough with the sniggering already.

So I had this post about half-written and managed to blow it away with an ill-placed click of the mouse.  Since I don't feel like recreating it, this will be the condensed version.

It's warm enough for grilling and smoking to begin in earnest.  That means buns are coming to the fore again.