Blog posts

This is perhaps my 5th attempt at making bread with sourdough starter, without any commercial yeast. Three of my previous attempts used a Sourdough pain naturel recipe with various mixes of whole wheat, white bread flour, and unbleached all-purpose flour, and one was an improvised recipe using white flours. I used an overnight levain with only a small amount of starter (~15g) for all of these.

I had a request from a new customer for Rosemary bread the other day, so started poking around looking at recipes. There were previous posts on TFL about Daniel Leader's rosemary filone in "Local Breads" with some indication of difficulty in reproducing his results, but as I have the book I thought I'd give it a try. Being me, I didn't just make one or two but took orders for 11 and made 12, hoping it would turn out!

Part of the process of moving and opening up a bakery in a new land, is working with and testing the local flour.  

Here is a no-frills flour comparison between one American and two Spanish flours. 

Just flour and water at 67% hydration with no baking:

*General Mills, Harvest King (MT, US)

*Gabino Bobo, Ariana (Zamora, ES)

*Roca, Eco Força (Lleida, ES)

-Mark

The Sinclair's Bakery Facebook Page

Hamelman Golden Raisin Bread, alfanso style.  With no evidence posted of this being made as baguettes, well, that opened the door for me with a welcome mat.

Hi folks. Very long time no post. I felt I just had to emerge from obscurity to let you know about my recent visit to Zita's Bang Bang Bakery in Siem Reap, Cambodia. (Zita's handle on TFL is BakingBadly, which I can tell you must be read as supremely ironic!).

Fortunately, our hotel (the Mekong Angkor Boutique Hotel - great value BTW) was just 10 minutes' walk away from Bang Bang Bakery according to Googlemaps . It seemed longer and we were relieved to locate the bakery, which looks gleaming new.

This is a recipe of my own, adapted from a similar recipe I use for pancakes, which was based on a simple sourdough crumpet recipe (starter, salt, sugar, soda), which itself made half decent pancakes, or "pan-fakes" as my wife named them. The added eggs and oil make them more like real waffles (or pancakes), but are more airy and crispy than similar ones made from milk and straight flour.

Some weeks back I checked out Ken Forkish's "Flour Water Salt Yeast" ebook from the local library, and began lurking on these forums. I have learned a great deal about bread from all of your expertise here.

I read the first part of the book and thought of trying his sourdough starter recipe, at vastly smaller portions. I think he suggests 500g each per feeding, which is crazy for a beginner--why on earth would you need so much when billions of these organisms can live in a teaspoon?

I am finally settled and, with a lively rye starter bubbling away in the fridge, baking again. Happiness is...

A simple sourdough enriched with 60 grams of butter and 100 grams of raw honey purchased from a farm nearby. I have dedicated it to the lovely little Blue Chequered Cuckoo Bees that love my big rosemary bush even more than I do.

This wood oven is in Aude, France. Anyone interested should consider to have it shipped by truck . It is mobile, but there about 2 1/2 tons to pull around . 

You will see in the video the step by step of its fabrication . So anyone can do this . I invested about 5,500 euros in it , and  will sell it for double in cash or trade.

This wood oven could also heat an entire large home with very little adapting . Because it  has 300 kilos of insulation  , once hot , it stays hot, and consumes very little wood.