Blog posts

Lately in the midst of making a lot of decent bread, I've had a string of mysterious failures.   Here are the symptoms:   at best poor opening of scores which leaves the resulting bread more compact than it should be and with gummier crumb.   At worst cakey crumb and collapses along the crust which leave a skin of paperlike crust with a cavern beneath.   The second gets thrown out; the first is fine to eat but nothing great.

This is a recipe I've been waiting to bake for four years, and after all that wait its definitely worth it, here is a super fast recipe - start to finish in less than two hours and a delicious loaf to enjoy

Full recipe on my blog here

It's been a while and I had a craving for some PVM.  I figured I'd do one final experiment and see the results using a stiff levain.

 I've used an 18 hour liquid wheat whole wheat levain (the original), 1/2 liquid white levain, 1/2 liquid wheat levain + 1/2 white, 1/2 white levain and 1/2 rye sour. I think the best is the 1/2 liquid white 1/2 liquid wheat. 

  This is a big one...and a tasty one, great with some barbeque.  If you are on a diet the butter and yogurt in this one is not going to do you any favors, but both added to the overall moistness in the final dough.

I love the way the roasted red peppers compliment the corn and the combination of Semolina flour along with the other flours really gives this bread a unique flavor worth trying.

After seeing Phyllis’s fine baguettes based on David Snyder’s San Joaquin recipe this week, we decided that we would do some baguettes to practice slashing - it’s been at least a year.  Plus the he date of Lucy’s Mom’s untimely death is approaching and that requires some kind slashing, no matter what, in her honor – lighting a candle just won’t do.

This is a 60% hydration dough, for some reason that is , for me, the best hydration to work with.

Recipe:

250g Mature Wheat Sourdough 

450g Bread Flour

I've seen a few posts showcasing polenta sourdough breads lately, so here's my take on it.

I cooked more porridge than I needed for the dough because it's hard to cook less using my smallest pot. I added 30 g Bob's Red Mill polenta (corn grits) to 120 g boiling water and cooked it over low heat until the water was just absorbed. I let the porridge cool overnight in the refrigerator.

I made my first gluten-free sourdough loaf, adapted from a recipe by Nicole Hunn in her book, Gluten-Free on a Shoestring Bakes Bread.

After a long break I am back in my search for perfection - this time is a recipe for a perfect white loaf, and I have found it!! I have tried it in its true form and have tried to play around with the recipe, and it still stands - this IS perception in a loaf.

Full recipe on my blog here

Excuse the poor slicing photo - more photos coming on the blog soon

Susan and I have just returned from two weeks in Italy. We spent a week in Venice, a couple days in Lucca and 4 days in Liguria. We broke up our return trip with an overnight stay in Milan. I am happy to report that the bread we had was much superior to that of our last visit to Amelia-Romagna and Tuscany  three years ago. 

The bread we were served in restaurants was almost always made wholly with white flour.