Blog posts

Monday:  My garden is bursting with Spring!  The wind is windy and the birds are joyful!  We have 18°C and the furnace has been turned off.  I've pulled a starter out of the fridge.   A firm rye that was not put into long hybernation (do not fear, my pretties, the prepared starter is the jar next to it also looking none the worse from wear.)  It's wonderful and exhausting to be back in Austria.  Lots of garden work and getting used to stairs again.  Back to the starter.

I just thought I would share this! It's a speech about bread that Peter Reinhart did at google's headquarters. I was really suprised to see that he used one of Dante Alighieri's allegories! Peter is such a gifted baker, writer, and rhetorician!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BK5mC_SkIPI&feature=related

I just made the Swedish Rye bread from Peter Reinhar't Bread Baker's Apprentice book.  An interesting bread but it brought back some interesting teenage memories!

Check it out.

http://saltandserenity.com/2010/04/25/37-swedish-rye-bread-2/

Saturday my mother and I decided to spend the day together in the kitchen. It's been awhile since we've done anything like this. We decided to make two cheeses and two breads. She is a complete bread newbie and we are both new to cheesemaking so this was an adventure.

Sometime last week, I built up my rye starter for a run-through of some rye loaves. For some reason or other I ended up with quite a bit more mature rye sourdough than I needed for the loaves I had planned. Too bad to throw it all away I thought, so I put the left-over starter to good use in a pain au levain-style formula. The result was more than I could've hoped for, so darn tasty as a matter of fact, that I worked a bit more on the formula, and baked a few of those rye-sourdough-pain-au-levain breads this weekend.

Boo hoo! My oven broke and I need a new one. The old one was constantly shutting itself off mid-bake. I don't have the luxury to choose any oven I want because I rent from my mother-in-law and she will be paying for it. It must be electric, range-top and not too expensive. Any suggestions? Thank you for your help.

Maybe this belongs in the "You know you're a bread baker when ..." topic.

I'm going to visit my younger son and his family next week. I haven't started packing, but I have the breads baked. 

Hey All,

Just wanted to let you know that I found a place that carries malted barley flour in NYC.  I haven't checked the other markets that I usually go to, ie: Fairway, Whole Foods.  I found this at the Korean Market "Han Ah Reum" on 32nd Street between Broadway and 5th Avenue in Koreatown.  It is the Choripdong brand.  They also have malted barley that's crushed.  It's $4.99 for 2lbs. 

Tim

Quick recap of the baguette baking:

-followed the recipe apart from the fact that I did not have enough AP flour on hand and sifted some stone ground white whole wheat flour to make up the difference.I think the ratio was about 3/4 AP to 1/4 WWW

-read and re-read about pre-shaping and shaping three times........even though it might not look it, that part seemed to go a lot better

-final proof was for about 1 hour 15 minutes

-the crumb is very light  and has a beautiful fragrant flavor;deeper taste probably due to the inclusion of the whole wheat

Hey All,

Just wanted to share with you my attempt at No Knead Bread from 4/25/10.  Enjoy!  The recipe will be posted below.

Tim

Ingredients:

1000g AP (Hecker’s)

800g Water

22g Kosher Salt

1/4 tsp Active Dry Yeast

1823g Total Dough

Instructions:

Night before baking