Blog posts

Welcome to my Lab of sorts.  For the next week or so, I will be documenting my progress on two different ferments I started at 12AM EST on March 6th, 2013.  The first is from Peter Reinhart's book Artisan Bread Every Day.  The other is from Joe Ortiz's The Village Baker.

We had some semolina left in the house that we needed to get rid of. We usually use it for making porridge (cream of wheat), but winter here is pretty much over with, and we had all this semolina lying around. Having just discovered this site and learned a panload of new techniques, I was eager to try something new. So why not semolina bread?

Well, because semolina isn't really supposed to be used for making bread, and I really should have known that.

My wife is not a big fan of my multi-grain breads and I'm always getting on her for not trying more of my breads.  For this reason I agreed to make her an English Muffin bread, which was simple and plain.  Well you know by now if you follow my posts that I don't know the meaning of the word simple so here is as close as I could bring myself to make a simple English Muffin style bread.

With David Snyder recent post of his new take on SFSD with higher amounts of Semolina and Ian’s new bread with semolina, it was only natural that another semolina bread would fit in this week. This one had a small amount of Desert Semolina - 150g.  We wanted to see if the high gluten, not just protein, claims were true.

I've just updated the sandbox (development) version of this site.  If you are so inclined, take a peek!  Username crust, password crumb to get to the site.

While I've recently revived a sourdough starter and have been keeping it going on my counter, I've also thought that it should be possible to have a ready to use product similar to instant yeast. Perhaps I'm spoiled by the homebrew shop where I can buy dozens of different yeast packets and even some lactobacillus for making sour beers. So when I saw packages of Seitenbacher sourdough on Amazon I bought a box and have now tried out making some bread using it directly, rather than trying to build a culture with it. This is what the company intends, but so far it's not been smooth sailing.

this bread is so tasty i had to bake a couple more to share with more friends

this is another version of red wine(Chateau Cap De Faugeres) cranberry sourdough using yeast water and osmanthus flower...

a big handful too

my first attempt on a batard shape!!

Most of my bread for the past couple of weeks has come from the freezer, rather than from the oven.  That's a good thing in that the freezer needs to be cleared out but not so satisfying as baking.  It also means that I've had a pretty steady diet of rye bread.  Again, that's a good thing but it was time for a change of pace and taste.

I was bored the other day so while surfing the internet for bread sites I revisited Breadtopia.com and was pleasantly surprised with some of the different flours and grains they offered for sale.  I decided to buy one of the ancient grains Kamut and also so hard red winter wheat called Turkey Whole Wheat Flour.  Below is some information from their website if you are interested.