This week’s baking—and cooking-- were inspired by Fresh Loaf masters proth5, Wally, SylviaH, Hansjoakim, and AW. There was duck confit, whole wheat bread, sandwich buns, and Pat’s “Getting the Bear” baguettes (aka “Bear-Gets”), including a Margueritte-shaped thing—"Le Fleur d’Ours".
My first baguettes are in their second rise under a canopy of dusted linen and plastic. I'm glad they're under wraps. They are undeniably ugly. Instead of rolling out slender columns of dough, I created things that look like squat electric eels, large cucumbers, chubby rolling pins. I hadn't allowed the dough to rest long enough after pre-shaping. Darn.
Well, we'll see what I end up with in two hours.
Sylvia
Bronx-to-Barn Baker
Actually, I posted this elsewhere, but am not sure how many have seen it, so I'm reposting under its own heading.
It's been a good while since I last chronicled our adventures and misadventures in the world of publishing, and a lot has happened in the interim.
This weekend, I baked a couple of breads I have enjoyed, but both were made with variations.
I have made the 100% whole wheat bread from Peter Reinhart's Whole Grain Baking a couple of times before with fresh-milled flour (100% Whole Wheat Bread from WGB, made with fresh-milled flour). I think it makes a delicious bread. This weekend, I wanted to make it with finer-milled flour and with a whole wheat starter, rather than a yeasted "biga."
This dough behaved more like 65% than 75% in my bone-dry winter city kitchen. I do like the long autolyse and long bulk fermentation, and I understand why txfarmer has this as her regular baguette. There is plenty of opportunity to vary the formula, as she has demonstrated, and there is also plenty of opportunity to observe and try to understand fermentation. The refrigerator is a pretty safe place for this dough, but it does need watching once it's out.
Hello,
My grandmother cooked professionally. I may have mentioned this before on these pages. She was not the "trained in culinary school" type of cook, she was a professional in the sense that a poor woman would be paid to cook in the home of a wealthy woman. As part of the whole "American Dream" experience for my family (a belated American dream perhaps as my ancestors were in America before the War for Independence) she cooked for many years in the home of the president of the university from which my brother and I obtained our undergraduate degrees.
So this enthusiasm about bread caught me quite off guard. If you had asked me two months ago if I wanted to start making my own bread, I probably wouldn't have paid much attention.
But things have quite changed. And it all pretty much started when I did my taxes. Much to my relief, my tax return was quite good (at least I got SOMETHING out of my schooling). And so upon receiving said tax return, I immediately purchased two things. One was a 70s vintage road bike in orange. The second, was a Breville stand mixer.
Sometimes I get giddy - and that isn't a pretty sight.
