Blog posts

Last week 's bake was a single loaf  sourdough  with hazel and walnuts

Cake zoo.
I love my animals and thus reflect this.
There are a lot of animals and animal lovers in our family too.
Like to bake animal figurines is the joy of kids!
They are our animals!

This is an 83% rye bread with a whole and chopped rye soaker and leavened with a ginger beer barm. As part of the total hydration it includes water that has been infused with fresh ginger to lend an accent of fresh ginger throughout the bread.

Ginger/water infusion

My last chocolate experiment was a bit (allright, a large bit) too sweet. This time, I eliminated the extra butter, brown sugar, and maple syrup, and went with 2 oz of bittersweet choc chips and 2 oz of milk choc chips. I added 5 oz of dried cherries and 4 oz of pecans. I also used 100% home-milled flour (mix of hard red and white wheat) and the sourdo.com Russian starter. After an initial 4 hour proof, I shaped and put in a pullman pan.

I've been wanting to learn how to cook and bake certain things for a while -- especially bread -- and I finally did it. I made one loaf yesterday that came out rather doughy on the inside, hard crust, and even harder bottom crust. Here are the things I think I did wrong with it:

Hello,
We stopped in at Mix The Bakery in Vancouver awhile back and picked up a loaf of their Cranberry Ginger bread.
This bread was delicious! (I wish I'd taken a picture of it).
Thinking about holiday 'gifts from the kitchen', I thought of this bakery's wonderful Cranberry Ginger bread.

Well, I'm having a busy baking week(end), getting the last few of my Christmas biscuits and the like made, ready to post to my relatives across Europe. I also made the Mohn Bars from the Inside the Jewish Bakery challenge, which will be part of the Christmas treats delivery too.

I have been reading with interest the postings by Andy (ananda) about his work with double levain breads.  Until now I had not experimented with them, but I had a fully refreshed rye sour at hand. I have already baked a solid brick of a Russian Black bread with that sour, and whilst licking my wounds I have been looking for something a little less difficult to exercise my sours with.  I'm not sure if double levain falls in that category or not, but at least it is not a 100% rye bread.