Blog posts

One of my most favorite cookbooks is "Ancient Grains for Modern Meals".

More loaves from the excellent Bread Alone. Click any picture to biggify it.

This time I adulterated the sourdough rye to add whole wheat berries and cracked wheat. I soaked the wheat berries overnight in leftover whey from making ricotta the day before.

First order of business, of course, is feeding my starter the day before to get it ready. Saturday morning I fed it:

Part 2 of the holiday started with the QM2 tying up in Southampton and bidding farewell to our travelling friends Bob and Joan were heading for London and were catching a National Express coach. They were to be in the first group to leave the ship and already had their luggage to disembark. Dave and Anita were actually going to be staying with family in Southampton and Judy and I were to be picking up a hire car that we had organised with an Australian broker before we left. The embarkation was very orderly with designated areas to go to until being called for.

I have been having difficulty overproofing my baguettes, so today I tried an experiment. I shaped three similar, though not quite identical, baguettes then baked them one after another, 27 minutes apart. You can see the results here, with the last bake on the left and the first on the right.

Had to get the matzoh done in time to make gefilte fish and Matzoh Ball soup.  My apprentice ave the chicken stock simmering away and has 10 tubs of smaltz in the freezer.  Now for more time:-)

Have a good Passover everyone!

To David Snyder. 

Thank you for encouraging me to go BIG.

This is the biggest single loaf I ever made, and it is as big as my oven can handle.

Hamelmans Miche Pointe-A-Caillere, made with Bacheldre ... Unbleached White flour.

** Added: a picture of the flour I used, at the end of the post **

Dough weight: 2300g

Baked weight: 1935g

Diameter: 32cm

Height: 9.5cm

I have recently converted my White Liquid starter into a stiff one, with a 50% whole wheat flour  - 50% AP flour flour mix. I browsed through the bread books, and found that Hamelman’s Miche point a calliere appeals to me, in addition to be a favorite of mine. Miche it was, therefore.

I wrapped up my classroom sessions for the Master Food Volunteer program this past week. It's been a rewarding experience and I'm looking  forward to participating in the demonstrations over the next 12 months. There will be a chance to teach some lessons in bread baking as long as I can develop a lesson plan that can be presented in an hour or so format that won't get deep in the weeds and lose the interest of the class.