Blog posts

I finally scratched the itch and plunged into the happy world of breadmaking. Okay, pretzel making. Break making will have to wait while I work on stirring up my sour dough starter. But the pretzels. . .ah! I followed Alton Brown's recipe (link on main page) and substituted whole wheat flour for the all purpose, sea salt for kosher, aluminum foil for parchment and salted butter for unsalted.

I've seen Hamelman's five-grain rye sourdough bread recommended a couple of times, but it wasn't until this morning that I had the opportunity to bake it for myself. It's a modest 25% whole rye, but the loaf is also studded with seeds and cracked rye, and there's a lot of flavor in it.

This has become a regular around here.  Pesto Pizza:

I use Peter Reinhart's pizza crust, Costco's pesto (which is actually quite good), frozen shrimp or chicken, and parmesan cheese.  The kids love it, we love it, and it is quick and easy, easy enough to do on a work night (or Valentine's, which is when this was from).

I was inspired by a question by someone in another bread forum and my own recent discovery and love affair with baking pita.  In the other forum, the person had frozen shaped bread dough and then was having problems reviving it.  I wondered if she could make pitas with it.  While that question remains unanswered, I tried a related experiment.

With a little help from qahtan (tip for walnut oil) and liam (tip for folding), I made wallnutbread this sundaymorning. Two versions: slowrise (from 3-4 days ago, 50% wheat from mill, whole groats wheatflour (?), 50% plain white flour) and an experiment: last night before midnight I mixed about half pain d'ancienne, mixed in the wallnuts and let it rise overnight.

Good Morning:

I love soft pretzels - who doesn't?  I just never seem to get them outside of fair settings.

And then the other week, Alton Brown did a show on homemade pretzels - it was a sign! So I went to the food network's site and I grabbed the recipe. (http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/homemade-soft-pretzels-recipe/index.html)

The Ingredients:

Hello everybody and missing you all !

Phyl Divine named me on his group on Facebook "artisan bread bakers".He named me "Pharaoh of flat Bread ".

I really was very happy but wondering all the time , why ?? May be phyl knows that Egyptians can not eat without the presence of the flat bread on their meals tables .

So I decided to present something about our daily bread in Egypt , may be to try to prove to myself that I really deserve this great title !!!!

Last week I was out of flour and was able to combine a trip for work to a nearby windmill: http://www.molendevlijt.nl . This mill has better openinghours then the mill I normally go to, and I tested the flour with a simple slow rising bread (next time I will add more simple flour, not just the wheat type). A great mill, I will be back there. I will need a bit more time to look around at the mill. It will take a while before I find the right/best combination of wheat for our weekly bread.

Howard's been baking his way through many of Suas' recipes at a furious pace. His posts have been equally inspiring and enlightening. With Howard way ahead of the curve, the last few weeks I've found myself sifting through the debris and studying the dough scraps left in his wake. Wanting a simple, clean and filling every day loaf, I had my first crack at the whole wheat sourdough (dough scrap #1).