Blog posts

For Rosh Hashanah, my wife stopped at Chompies Bakery http://chompies.com/  to bring home a fine, non sourdough, snail shaped, raisin challah.  It was a leaner to the left with the inner circles higher than the outer ones – very tall.  Just beautiful, perfectly baked and delicious!  I can’t wait to have it for French toast this morning.

Seemed like a good day to try some challah.

Both leavened with wild yeast. Traditional round baked in a cloche.

5 braid baked on an outdoor grill.  Both delicious.

So I thought I'd try my Home brew beer in this bread taking all your previous comments into account.

English muffins.  I started with Gisslen's formula, but have to avoid milk, so take it out.  I am still using a very similar formula, but not with a straight dough process, rather adapted to sponge and dough.  I'm slowly increasing the hydration until I get a somewhat flat top during proof.  Next time I'll try 75%.  Gisslen includes 2.3% milk solids, which have an absorbancy of some value, maybe about 1:1. This is the second time I've used gypsum, the first time it accelerated yeast growth, replacing the calcium removed by the water filter.

When a friend showed up at my front door with a freshly picked pumpkin in her arms I didn't have to think much as to how it would be 'put to use'.  Recently I had found a recipe for a spiced pumpkin loaf on a food blogger's site (Annie's Eats) that had caught my attention.  While the original recipe didn't include cardamom, I somehow decided to include it in my ingredient list. I am glad I did.  I also used WY to leaven the loaves rather than IY…..I just can't resist tweaking recipes :*)

With Rosh Hashanah right around the corner, Lucy always tries something new for knish fillings.  This year we caramelized some onions, then threw in some cabbage, a clove of minced garlic and some  home made / smoked shopped corned beef.

A song of the good green grass!

A song no more of the city streets;

A song of farms - a song of the soil of fields.

A song with the smell of sun-dried hay, where the nimble pitchers handle the pitch fork;

A song tasting of new wheat and of fresh husk'd maize.

A Carol of Harvest, for 1867.  Walt Whitman (1819-1898)

While I love rustic free-form loaves with a bold, crackling crust, complex flavor, and a crumb riddled with holes, my family does like whole wheat bread with a denser crumb, softer crust, and low acidity, in a shape good for sandwiches and toast. I hope that I was able to deliver something to satisfy that need, providing a healthful loaf with the previously mentioned qualities.

Here are some pictures of the loaves, including some crumb shots.