Blog posts

This is my first time making and eating Panettone.  It was a lot of work but enjoyable.  This is my version of P.Reinhart's recipe in BBA.  While mixing this dough I couldn't help but to say to myself how it appeared like cake batter one minute and then dough the next!  I made adjustments in hydration and added some stretch and folds adding a longer time to the proofing.  I had ordered some paper bread molds two sizes.  I decided not to use the small ones.  They were so very small looking.  The large ones where a little t

Three weeks of sourdough. Got my starter from a baking class and named him Clint. After Clint Eastwood - full of potential!

The basic recipe is as follows:

Ingredients:

1/2 cup starter

2 cups whole wheat bread flour

1 cup AP unbleached flour

2 t salt

1.25-1.5 cups water

Methods:

- Mix flours and water to form a shaggy dough. Autolyse - rest for 30 mins.

- Add starter and knead 8-10 minutes, till you get a windowpane.

- Add salt and rest.

- 3 stretch and folds at 20-30 minutes apart.

I remember my mother baking Hutzelbrot but never learned how she did it. I've found several different recipes but I'd like to hear from someone who has actually made this bread and learn your recipe. I've been trying some  recipes, but can't get the soaked fruit to mixed with the dough. Also my tries have been dry.. which I don't think Hutzelbrot should be.

We started our annual beach holiday this year without much preparation, unlike previous years.  It has been a very busy year, and so when we arrived at the North Folk Island Pine Tree-lined boulevard right next to the beach front, looking for our holiday unit, we were exhausted.  There was a feel of South of France here at this little north facing beach in the south of Queensland, bordering New South Wales. 

After a quick lunch, it was time to be [b]off[/b] to the beach ....

Hello everyone, this is my first contribution. I've been lurking on this site for a while and have spent many hours reading and digesting the wealth of information here.  Now that I'm on holiday and have some spare time I can finally seriously get stuck into improving my breadmaking techniques and contributing my own experiences to this amazing site.

It is Christmas time and it seems lots of people are making Stollen so here is my addition to the mix. 

I heard about Stollen recently and how good it is so I decided that I wanted to make some.  The only problem is I have never eaten or seen Stollen.  I looked in my books and on the internet for recipes for sourdough Stollen and decided to improvise and make my own.  The paragraph from Peter Reinharts's "The Bread Baker's Apprentice" is very nice and I think worthy of quoting here.

I wasn't going to bake this weekend because I made some 'San Jooaquin Sourdough' with flax and sunflower seeds during the week. Last night my wife mentioned seeing a recipe for Stollen in the latest Martha Stewart magazine and I have noticed a number of TFL posts on Stollen lately . I recalled seeing  recipes in BBA and also Crust so I drug them out and compared ingredients and decided to go with Reinhart. I have made his cinammon raisin bread twice before, it was a big hit, so I decided as long as I'm going to spend the day I might as well do it in a big way.

I have a problem. Admitting that you have a problem is the first step to recovery, right?

So here I am, 7 weeks after giving birth to a wonderful baby boy...and I have 12 loaves of bread in various stages of becoming tasty, crusty goodness.

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I'm really excited about this crusty loaf that I had formed into a ring. The bread turned out fabulously. I used a relatively new way of shaping that I learned from watching this YouTube video and then left the shaped bread in the fridge overnight and baked it the next morning. The crust is even more caramelized and crispy and the crumb has a wonderful nutty flavour.

KAF printed this recipe in a recent catalog (click on "recipe" to get there).  I totally love them!  I bake them a couple times a week.  They are very very crunchy...sort of like thin biscotti.  They are SO easy, and healthy too.  I make them for my chip-loving husband as a much better choice for him.  So I've found that slicing them into long strips (with a pizza cutter after the dough is rolled) makes them easier to eat (roll out the dough on your counter (thin!), it's not stick