Blog posts

I'm in the middle of my very first SD bake.  I'm using Hamelman's Vermont Sourdough recipe, which uses a levain.  I grew my levain for 7 days (he says in the book that it should be ready to use on day 6).  The thing is, I didn't really see much rise in the bulk ferment stage.  There was a change in the dough structure, but very little growth (2.5 hours with 1 fold).  My shaped loaves have been sitting for 2.5 hours and though smooth and elastic looking...still not much growth.  The oven is heating right now...if I don't see miraculous oven spring, these are goi

Today I tried Jason's Quick Coccodrillo Ciabatta. It was quick and easy as stated. I did do the SD variation to use up some of my starter and found I did have to add another 1/2 cup of flour for it to come together even after 1/2 hour mixing.

With the leftover I did up a pizza dough for supper tonight.

I found this pan in my basement in its original box and thought I would try it out. I extended it about 17 inches for this loaf, but I believe it was too long for the amt. of dough. It is quite wide as well. It worked nicely but again I think I could have made the pan smaller.  Ray

... a bowl of cherry peppers, grilled.

Every summer, my husband buys pepper plants, even though I have never had any success growing them.  Eggplants, zucchini, cucumbers, Chinese long beans- no problem, but peppers- just can't grow them.  So, this year B. says maybe you'll have better luck with cherry peppers, and proceeds to buy 3 plants.

A bowl of cherries

Hi, loafers!

I just returned from a week on the Oregon coast vacationing with our sons and their families. <sigh> It always seems too short.

Hi all,

I just had to throw away my two rather expensive wooden bannetons, and I had to share my story.

Well we went on holidays and I forgot to take my starter along so I had to live on bread machine bread while we were gone. My starter (Bob) survived the 3 weeks home in the fridge just fine. Today I finally had some free time and what I wanted most was Beer and Cheese SD. I used PR's basic SD recipe and replaced the water with beer and added the cheese after the 1st knead and rest.

I made 4 loaves. We just had to cut into them to go with supper, thus a perfect photo op.

Last week I tried Hamelman's fougasse with olives recipe for the first time and had a very happy outcome.

However, in attempting to move the bread onto parchment after scoring it, I nearly had disasterous results, since the scoring leaves it without any 'backbone.' So I resolved to do a bake today avoiding last week's hassles by allowing the fougasse to rise on parchment paper.

Every time I spend five, six weeks with my family in Switzerland in summer, this is the bread I am looking forward to eating the most.

It is originally from Geneva (the French-speaking part of Switzerland) and its inventor is Aimé Pouly, the author of the book “Le pain” (available, but out of stock right now at Amazon, only in French, as far as I know).

Day one of Artisan II course at the San Francisco Baking Institute, Frank our instructor touched on a buzz word for me - Freedom.  This was by no means any where in the manual or was there any hint on his part of an emphasis when he mentioned it; it was a casual passing comment.  He said the best bread for him is a bread with a pre-ferment (poolish or sponge where there is a small amount of commercial yeast) and a levain (in the final dough which is then retarded), and that this combination gives you a lot of "freedom."