Blog posts

My wife has been an instructor in some women's groups recently that have had, as one component, some instruction in cooking.  She was a bit surprised to find just how much interest there was among the women who attended these sessions in learning more about cooking.  For some, it was an opportunity to expand their repertoire with new recipes or techniques.  For others, it was a chance to learn basic skills that they had not been taught previously.  

Pictured below is a sourdough raisin walnut bread. the recipe i copies is from ehanner at http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/6629/raisin-walnut-sd-delight. i sliced it thin, toasted + butter + a little extra cinnamon sugar on top = YUM! i was hoping to get a larger ovenspring but i dont think my oven was hot enough. i also didnt score the bread properly.

Susan from San Diego, of “Magic Bowl” fame, has posted two of her basic sourdough bread recipes. These have been on my lengthy “to bake list” for a long time. The photos of her breads are stunning, and many other TFL members have baked from her recipes and enthused about their results.

This weekend, I baked two boules of her “Original Sourdough” - to be distinguished from her “Ultimate Sourdough.” The latter can be found here:

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/6927/well-i-finally-did-it

this is my first Sourdough: (san fran SD, i think it was pretty good for a first time). All of the sourdough things that I baked I used with the starter that I grew with Sourdo Lady's recipe, using dulled lemon juice.

sorry for the blurry image...

I made baguettes with poolish using one of the recipes on this site, and It was delightful!! my family all agreed that this was some of the best bread I've made!

compare to my first try with baguettes:

Way better!

I worked from home Wednesday and used it as an opportunity to refresh my starter and bake a couple of loaves.

The dough I made was a "little of this and that" dough.  I threw some leftover mashed potatoes in, the last couple of ounces of a bag of rye flour I had, a bit of whole wheat flour from another bag I needed to use up, and a couple of cups of AP flours.  I made the dough very wet, 70+ percent hydration.

I decided after a few sensible, somewhat alarmist, posts here on TFL that i would not buy unglazed flooring tiles (terracotta, saltillo, etc) for use in my oven. There are too many health concerns involved with the manufacturing and raw material differences between flooring tiles and bakeware. Any cause for concern should not be ignored. It's likely that flooring tiles could be perfectly fine to bake with. On the other hand, maybe not.

Finally got myself an inexpensive digital camera and would like to show off one of my "creations" which is far from original.  I'm sure many of you have made this danish ring.  I got this recipe from www.cookscountry.com/recipe.asp?recipeids=3846&bcd=46152.  Cooks Country is a great web site, by the way, and would like to know how many of you are members and whether or not you use your membership.  They seem to have a gold mine of knowledge with truckloads of practical advice.  I'm

Well I'm just getting in practice...the fire needed to be hotter today..Im still very much in the learning stages! At least I know how to build a fire!  That took practice..now I can make a fire with only a few minutes of the smoke you get when first lighting up the logs and let me tell you...you can get a lot if you don't do it right!  The first time my daughter and I lit it up...the fire department drove by in our neighborhood!!  I guess they saw what it was and didn't bother us.  A neighbor probably called!!  We had such a