Blog posts

Hello everyone,
Farine featured Luminita Cirstea in a 'Meet the Baker' post on her website.
Ms. Cirstea's courage, hard work, commitment and talent are so inspiring!
I so wanted to try making Ms. Cirstea's delicious-looking (and prize-winning!) Raisin-Rye bread.
With thanks to Farine for writing about Ms. Cirstea, and thanks to Ms. Cirstea for her efforts to develop this formula!

Thanks are due at the top to Farine-MC for her charming blog and its marvelous, useful content, and also to breadsong, scoring master and exemplary baker.

In brief, I neglected to take account of the very low humidity in New York City right now. My maple oatmeal was both too stiff and underproofed. Yes, I made the same mistake two weeks ago with another loaf. Now I have two striked against me, so I hope that atleast it will be something different that I overlook next time. The effects of the underproofing are clear on the batard.

I have undertaken the BBA challenge for 2011 but I am not one to follow directions.  I am making the recipes in the order that they appeal to me or what I have a desire to bake.  This does however mean that I will be on my own during the challenge without a number of supporters.  My family decided they wanted some cinnamon rolls, so i pulled out the bba and went to work 

This is a Whole Wheat Barley Bread I baked yesterday. The recipe was made to include my barley flour.

Procedure:

Day 1:

Mix the Soaker contents in a Bowl until you form a ball. Put the dough in a an oiled container and leave at room temp. for 24 hours.

Mix the Biga contents in a Bowl until you form a ball. Put the dough in a a large oiled container and into a fridge for 24 hours.

Day 2:

I wanted to make a sandwich roll that had some substance both for chew and to hold up under moist sandwich ingredients, but something tender enough to be compressible.  I’d been meaning to try a bread with some potatoes in it, as I’d heard that potatoes add some tenderness to the crumb (and every crumb needs a little tenderness).

This does not quite match the discussions I have read, and I am hoping someone might recognize what is going on here and point me in the right direction.

Hi - Long time lurker, first time poster!  I love everything that you do here.  It has been such an inspiration!

I am giving the 36 Hour SD Baguette recipe a shot.  The only difference in our recipes is that I have Bob's Red Mill AP flour on hand and used it.  Yesterday went well, I made it through step 3 (all the S&F and putting up for the 24 hours). 

Yeast-less. Again??

To tell you the truth, I've been a bit low on the breadbaking front recently. My love of food and cooking have never been greater, however, and I don't think I've ever spent more time in the kitchen than I have during the last couple of months. The downtime in breadbaking means that I get the chance to broaden my other culinary horizons, and I thought I should put together some photos of what I've been up to this weekend.

The goal:  A simple, 100% wholegrain, sourdough bread that I can make on an after-work weeknight schedule. 

Hi all. It's been quite a while since I contributed to this site. Lots of changes in last 18 months: bought a farm, began raising grass-fed/grass-finished beef, sold house, now building farm house, started hosting an FM radio show about sustainable farming and its links to sustainable local economies and community. I've been relying on my bread machine for months, but I'm itching to get back to "real" bread baking. I've signed up for a Hamelman challenge to push me along. A secondary challenge is that my bread books are in storage while the farm house is under construction.