Blog posts

Hi all, I've been enjoying all your posts over the last week or so, it looks like many of you produced great breads for the holidays.  I did some baking over the holidays I need to catch up on blogging about.  I was away from home so in other words, away from the mixer, the baking stone, my arsenal of flours and the sourdough I am used to working with.  Add to that new brotforms I received for Christmas and you don't know what will happen.  Thankfully I have been reading up here at the fresh loaf and this gave me the opportunity to experiment with new methods and get out

When nothing seems to be rational in my life and I have lost all of my center I can always turn to baking...and so it has been for 37 years or so. I made my first Challah in 1976 or so...here it is again...almost every week since then. I had some extra "discard" starter and bananas and applesauce that I made last summer and lo and behold it becomes bread and muffins. My freezer is full and for a little while the demons are held back.

I received a copy of "Breads From La Brea Bakery" for Christmas and today made the bagels from it. I have made bagels from other recipes 3 or 4 times before and had reasonable results. These were by far the best looking ones. I have yet to taste them but they are also the first bagels I have made using sourdough so I think they will be good.

Oh my, oh my, oh my.  I finally made Shiao Ping's Chocolate Sourdough.  Let me first say, SP--you really need to publish a cookbook.  It would be full of great recipes and fun, witty stories.  I thank you so much for bringing us this recipe.  Words just don't describe how good this is.  "Epic" is a good starting place...kudos to your son.  I made this as written.  All I had in the pantry were milk chocolate chips (large chips, about double the size of the regular bittersweet chips).  The biggest challenge I had was chips popping out of the d

What do you do when you bought the wrong grapes and your children and house guests don't eat them?  I don't mind the odd seeds in the grapes; I chew them and swallow them.  They are good for you.  Plenty of anti-oxidant in the grape seeds!  But do you think I can get my family to eat these beautiful grapes? 

Two old friends ...

Vermont Sourdough

My scoring was inspired by Shiao-Ping's most recent miche.

Vermont Sourdough Crumb

San Joaquin Sourdough

Backstory

I had lunch with a friend in Minneapolis at an establishment called The French Meadow Bakery. I had bacon and eggs, which was served with a couple slices of toasted sourdough. The bread was like a typical sourdough, but had a hint of caraway.

It's listed on the menu as organic sourdough toast. No mention of caraway. Perhaps it was just stored next to a caraway rye. In any case, I decided that I would try to make a sourdough that has all the wonderful characteristics of a standard sourdough, but with a subtle taste of rye and hint of caraway.

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/recipes/bananabread

My daughter left today for Belgium to start a six week (French speaking) holiday and visiting our family friends over there.  A couple of days ago I asked if there's anything she'd like me to make before she goes.  She said, "Something familiar."  I can take the hint.  Recently, I have been experimenting with rye flour and my family are not very impressed with the result.