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Most woodfired oven owners only use their oven once a week or so to bake pizza or bread at fairly high temperatures. There's another level of cooking available, at lower and constant temperatures, which requires pulsing the oven with small fires. This is useful knowing about both to protect the oven from unnecessary cracking from cold firing and also to expand your cooking repertoire.

Sometimes baking bread seems to be about the challenge and developing the skills and trying new things and so forth.   And sometimes it is all about making what you want to eat.   When I started bread-making in earnest in January, I suddenly lost my taste for the supermarket bagels I'd been eating happily for several years.   Since there is no good bagel place in my immediate area, I simply stopped eating bagels.  But then many of you just kept posting and posting and posting your various bagel bakes, and I couldn't stand it anymore.   So I decid

This is one of those breads I have been very eager to make, and it is finally done. I am posting about this now, even though the 24 hour rest is not done with yet,because the little man is asleep and I am also trying not to forget any aspects of the procedure.

-my SD starter with the rye meal fermented in the oven with pilot light on for about 12 hours and then I stuck it into the fridge for convenience

-I soaked the berries for about  18 hours, then boiled for about 1.5 hours

Slight Variations on Two More Formulae from Hamelman's "Bread"

I made these last weekend.

75% Sourdough Rye with a Rye Flour Soaker

This was pretty faithful to the original recipe, except that the rye flour had to be cut back to 75%, as I ran out of dark rye flour.   Also, it is leavened only by the sourdough; no added yeast.  Detail is shown below.

Hey All,

Just wanted to share with you my bake from last night.  Ciabatta blobs.  I was planning to bake something else, but switched plans last minute...  I'm happy with them.  They have the most open crumb that I have gotten in a long time...  Enjoy!

Recipe is below.

Tim

Hi All, just wanted to tell you about that a new blog about bread was born, it's memoriasdelpan.com from Iban, who already created tequedasacenar.com and elforodelpan.com.....it's in spanish but any online translator would be helpful....happy baking from quito.

Hi Everyone,

Today I finally got Bread by Jeffery Hamelman from the library!  I have only read a few pages, but I can already tell that it is going to be a fantastic book.  I already own two bread books, one of them being The Bread Bible by RLB, but I can't wait to bake from this one (isn't it cruel that the library deadline for returning is two weeks?).  But I suppose I could always renew it.  The big chalenge is going to be deciding what to bake from it first!  I want to make something unlike anything I have ever made before (such as focaccia, which I make a

Yesterday was the big premiere: first wholemeal loaf made with home-milled flour, and also the first try at baking a loaf from Reinhart's Whole Grain Breads: the Rye Sandwich Meteil. Of course, I can't help but tinker, thus replaced about a quarter of the rye meal with a multigrain mix. 

So I started this a day ahead, did the whole mother starter thing (why he can't just call it sourdough, I don't know), I soaked, and mixed, I rested overnight, and after work yesterday I mixed, I rested etc etc. 

I love baguettes. I love them for the challenge but even more for the complexity of flavor that can be developed. My two favorites are Hamelman's poolish baguette and Sam Fromartz's Parisian baguette that gains so much from the addition of just a small amount of whole wheat flour and sourdough.