Blog posts

Trying to lose weight as a bread baker is really the pits. It is really cramping my baking frequency! But with the holidays coming I wanted to make some "decorative" bread so I decided to give the Epi another try. While previous efforts were not necessarily failures, I figured it would be a good chance to explore my skills (whatever they might or might not be!)

Saturday's game plan was to do a turkey dinner with all the trimmings for some of our South African friends.

This weekend was devoted to experimenting with fruit yeast, and a second go at an old favorite. While I was waiting for my apples to ferment, I was also nurturing a levain for David's famous San Joaquin Sourdough. My first trial at the San Joaquin had been okay, but fell short of David (dmsnyder)'s example, leaving room for improvement.

Butter didn't smoosh in my bag on the way to work. Quite handy I think!

Recently, i've been suffering from BDS between bakes, or when my bread reserve dwindles.

Should i feel OK with that? I don't know.. am i not getting a Life? Possibly, yet, I may just be another Home Baker. I can live with that ;)

What's itching me further is that i, like many, was diagnosed with a mild Lumbar disc hernisis, and therefore with no Bread on plan for the week end.

I'll be baking, nonetheless.

Alternate titles for this post: "Saturday, Sunday and Monday Baguettes", or "Why my wife thinks I'm crazy, but fortunately isn't sick of baguettes yet".

My Foundation Degree students were making their own breads using pre-ferments a couple of weeks ago.   Both a "Biga" and a "Poolish" were available for their use.   They made some very fine pizzas, and an assortment of flavoured breads.

Once they had weighed all their pre-ferments, I noticed there were some "leftovers".

Alto and sax , my white and rye starters, were outgrowing their containers since I have been feeding and not discarding . I did this on purpose as I need the discard for lots of other goodies. Here is the best yet. I have made this particular banana bread several times but this time I did a couple different things and it paid off.

Inspired by Franko and many others, here I am joining in finally with the baking in a pot theme. This dough went straight into  a hot enamel lined cast iron pot, no parchment, no oil and came out clean as a whistle....  plus I must mention Dr Fugawe's awesome home grown Oregon starter (Grapplestein) which has emigrated safely to the UK and raised this one for me! I still don't know how to get those pointy slash ends, maybe I should start the slashes higher up or not cut so deep?  Joanna @ Zeb Bakes

Went to Seattle to visit my parents for Thanksgiving, made cookies, muffins, 3 different kinds of breads, with no evidence since I forgot to bring my camera. Oh well, they tasted good though! Came home on Sunday and need some bread for this week's lunch, but my starters are sound asleep in the fridge. Made this quick 40% rye from Dan Lepard's "A handmade loaf" using dry yeast. The liquid in the formula is dill pickle juice, boosted by some extra fresh dill, the loaf was very flavorful.