I'm not too picky about flour. In general, I pick the lowest cost unbleached bread flour I can find (for what it's worth, this is almost always White Lilly High Protein Bread Flour, which runs about $0.50/pound). If I can find King Arthur Flour for a reasonable price, I will buy it. In my area, most stores have it for around $0.80/pound -- not too shabby.
Hello,
I must be a glutton for punishment. After six months of trying to improve my baguette making skills, I'm already raring to head off on a new "quest" after just one weekend of "free" baking. However, I can't decide between two possible quests, and I'm looking for some advice. Also, much like with Saturday Baguettes, I'll be posting my results regularly as a commitment mechanism, so if there are folks out there who would be more interested in reading about one or the other, that's important to me too.
Early Summer Baking:
Pain de Campagne with Mixed Leavens and Borodinsky in a Banneton
Apple Breakfast Cake
Austrian Easter bread, farmer's recipe
It is that time of the year again, where I can't wait for the taste of sweet bread with smoked meats, hardboiled eggs and
freshly grated horseraddish. It is very traditional to eat this kind of bread for the Easter holidays, some even put raisins
in it and there is a much softer almost no crumb version out there. Oddly everyone seems to fancy the contrast of
meat/radish/horseradish on a very sweet bread, but only for the holidays. It is a tradition,what can I say. My mom
Somehow, durum flour eluded me. I thought that fine semolina was durum flour (given that they're both comes from durum wheat). I thought durum flour was called fine semolina in Australia.
Dude, where's my bread?! Quite a few people have asked me whether my 36 hour soudough baguette dough can be used for other breads, of coure! The most natural vaiation is of course ciabatta, another hole-y bread. I again used a mixture of rye starter and white starter (something about this combo makes the flavor better), and raised the hydration to 85% (10% rye in the dough, so it's probably similar to a 82% hydration white dough).
AP flour, 425g
I used Hamelman's formula for this classic Vermont Sourdough. Used Heartland Orgranic flours that I found at Whole Foods. Dough was hand-kneaded and retarded overnight. Baked on 2 inch firebrick and covered with aluminum roasting pans ($1 at Dollor store) for first 20 mins of baking. Sorry there is no crumb shot, but trust me that it was as soft as a pillow! I attribute my success to the gentle kneading, organic flour, and aluminum covers. Enjoy!
