Blog posts

My husband and his friends were having a peach sour beer tasting party and he asked me to bake something that could pair well with those beers. I considered baking something peachy, but peach season is not quite in full swing yet, so the ones available at the farmers' markets are still a bit too pricey and not quite at their best.

Sometimes you just want a loaf of pan bread.

I have been working for a while to nail down a loaf of relatively lean sandwich pan bread, moving through formulas in many a baking book, converting them to sourdough and scaling them for my 4"x8" loaf pan.  I ended up settling on a highly-tweaked formula based on Peter Reinhart's Vienna Bread from BBA. Recipe is scaled for a 4 inch by 8 inch metal loaf pan.  A young levian is used for this bread, a mere 4-6 hours after the preferment has been mixed.

Natural Leaven Vienna Bread:

My Tartine loaves made with 70% home-milled flour came out excellent.  I have one in the freezer to bring to the in-laws next weekend, and brought one to my parents for dinner last night.  My dad re-heated it in the toaster oven and it was a little difficult to cut -- the bread tore a bit and I don't know if that was the knife's fault (a very sharp "bow" knife) or if the crumb was just too soft.  I don't think it would have worked for a sandwich bread, but maybe once it cools off it will be easier to slice.

Well its been a while since i had the time to bake,but when i visited the brew shop and was impressed with the different grains that were there for brewing i bought some malted rye grains from Germany something gave me a giddyup.

I've finally jumped into the 36 hour sourdough bandwagon. I had some ripe Rye sour on hand, as I created a preferment out of a starter for no certain recipe  (Happens to me often), and decided to give the 36 hour sourdough a trial. With all the rave on TFL, I knew that the method will yield excellent bread.

The Recipe:

For the past year this site and my sister Varda, whom many of you know here as an experienced baker, have been teaching me to bake bread.  Varda lives 3000 miles away so the teaching has, obviously, not been hands-on.  But learning to bake bread, as I have learned, can only be hands-on.   The photo associated with my profile is my first and very sorry attempt at baking.  Varda said " baguettes are not for beginners".  Did I listen?  No.

I decided I'd fine tune my Sesame Wheat this week.  The previous results had notes saying "approved" so I didn't faddle much with the formula but I will increase the hydration next time as the seeds gobbled up some of the h20.  I may also see if ti benefits from a liquid levain opposed to stiff next go around.  

I have been busy with work and trying to fit in baking here and there. Took a moment to upload some pics of my bakes over the past weeks.

Here is the barley bread I made. Hydration was 68% and the ground barley took 30% of the flour weight. Salt .025%

Here is a pic of american style sponge cake with strawberry jam and topped with whipped creme.