Blog posts

Sometimes when my heart's heaving, when I'm struggling to smile or lift my head high, I think about my friends, my beloved customers.

One time, a regular at the farmers market gifted me a bag of organic rye flour (non-existent in Cambodia) & a glass bottle of baker's yeast... manufactured in 1956!

My jaw dropped.

Another time, another regular surprised me with a bottle of 100% pure, natural maple syrup (another scarcity in Cambodia) harvested by her family in Canada.

As a Canadian, f**king eh!!

With Lucy’s success, after 3 tries, at the Methodist Ladies, 1906 Witch Yeast, Lucy thought she could move on to a more difficult starter - especially now that she has finally passed the last of the aluminum foil wrapped Hershey’s Kisses she ate a couple of days before Christmas – nearly a whole bag of them.  So much for chocolates being poisonous for dogs too.

This bread was the last minute thought to accompany some left over vegetable, squid and bay scallop chowder that is a mainstay at Christmas Eve dinner. It also served as a means to use up some starter that needed refreshed and some cheese left over from the same meal. Since time was short it is a hybrid with 125g starter and a pinch ( too small to weigh with my 1g minimum scale) of commercial yeast. The flour,500g total, is 50% fresh ground white whole wheat and 50% AP.

  I made a version of this bread in the summer and decided to bake it again with some modifications to bring to our friends house for Christmas dinner.  I usually bring some type of rye bread to go with the Christmas ham and figured a nice moist porridge bread would do the trick.

I decided to add some beer which usually gives Rye a wonderful flavor and I also added some toasted onions to the second build of the starter to really enhance the onion flavor profile.

The year end is approaching once again and it is time to reflect on what I have done and have not. Though, this time around, I chose to count on all the blessings instead and TFL is definitely one of them as I have benefited so much from the helpful community around here.

Many thanks to Abe, dabrownman, Alan, Minioven, Gordon and so many more people out there...

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year and as always....Happy Baking : ) 

This was first described here by freerk. 

I modified the recipe by not using yeast and using a very active rye starter (100% hydration). As high extraction flour I used Red Fife. The dough was very slack so that I could't really formed a batard, and I used an oblong cloche. The taste was beautiful.

Tom.

Well typically I make hybrid breads using commercial yeast and my starter. Earlier this month  during a thrift store jaunt I picked up a used dutch oven, and I decided that I wanted to to test it out by revisiting my old nemesis Sourdough bread. 

Yesterday was one of the happiest days of my life! By noon, we went to an unassuming neighborhood to have the best gastronomic experience to date! There, waiting for us is a whole roast pork for us to take home; golden and crackling!

I bought this amazingly delicious bread from a bakery in my hometown 
It was dense but it felt light and with a great crispy crust and plenty of grains.

Few days after tasting it I started to develop an obsession to discover the mysteries of this bread
I even posted a forum thread to share this urge with the TFL experts

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/44314/how-achieve-crustcrumb-texture

• 62g bread flour (11%)
• 196g all purpose flour (35%)
• 96g fresh milled spelt (17%)
• 146g fresh milled hard red (26%)
• 120g 100% hydration, rye levain (11% rye 11% water)
• 415g warm water (74%)
• 280g strained, fermented, cracked spelt berries

1/2 hr autolyse 

mix in levain and salt