Blog posts

That is not the question.  But how to steam?  Ah, there's the rub (with apologies to the Bard).

Hello and Happy New Year everyone!

I thought it would be fun to open up a bottle of something bubbly (a bottle of Guinness) and bake a loaf
for New Year’s…started on New Year’s Eve, and baked on New Year’s Day :^)

Katie’s Stout and Flaxseed Bread (thanks to Andy for originally posting about this, and to Karin for the reminder):

I just would not feel right without some black eyed peas on New Years Day.  Fresh black eyed peas they say represents coins and the kale money...hummm sounds good and lucky to me.  

This is my MIL real southern cornbread recipe..god bless her...I call it grandma Turner's cornbread.  It has no sugar and no flour and is dropped into a hot skillet of bacon fat.

I don’t usually get much time to bake during the holidays, but when I was asked to bake some bread to go with Christmas dinner how could I possibly refuse?  This was the perfect opportunity to try Andy’s mixed leaven formula.  It’s the sort of bread that will go with just about anything and the overnight  bulk ferment suited my schedule perfectly.  The only major change I made was to bulk ferment in a 60°F part of the house rather than in the refrigerator to accommodate my s

Sourdough Raisin Boule :)

On Christmas eve I made 3 pounds of  dough for two large batard loaves intending to bake Christmas morning after overnight refrigerator proofing.  In the morning I went to preheat and the electric ignitor that starts my gas oven was broke and it didn't come on!  I wasn't sure if I could freeze the dough at this point.  I was targeting 72% hydration rather than a more typical 75% for a Tartine bake as I would be baking on a stone rather than in a dutch oven and looking to keep dough from spreading too much.&

After all the heavy food, sweets and rich baked goods at holiday time, I decided to bake some nice healthy loaves of bread and make some soup with local North Coast seafood.  OK, the chowder has a good dose of cream in it, but I used a recipe without bacon, so it’s dietetic compared to my usual.

Happy New Year to everyone!

Around my native town Freiburg in south-west Germany we have thae habit to eat some huge and elaborately decoreted brezels made of sweet dough for breakfast on New Year's Day. (Usually they are made by professional bakers.)

I made  some of them in the past, here some impressions from this year's bake.

A little mouse made by my wife, peeking into the future:

The somewhat more conventional Neujahrs-Brezel I made: