Blog posts

When was that again?

I'm always a bit confused about Easter.

I'm never sure when it's going to happen. Last year it was at the end of April. This year it's the 8th! As usual, I visit the Wiki Easter page in an attempt to, for once and for all, understand about full moons, spring equinoxes, Julian and Gregorian calendars and... well, that's usually where I give up.

This bread is an adaptation of my Coffee flavored Rye bread I made a little while ago.  This time I tried to get a stronger coffee flavor so at the suggestion of my fellow "Mad Scientist" bread baker DA Brownman, I added espresso powder to the recipe.  I also increased the amount of onion since I wanted a more pronounced onion flavor in the final product.  If you are not a big onion

http://www.flickr.com/photos/67544166@N06/sets/72157627650212109/

I baked David’s “San Francisco Style Sourdough”.   I used the formula and procedure from his latest blog entry on the on-going experiment (http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/27982/san-franciscostyle-sourdough-bread-two-ways-3252012), except I did not retard the proofed loaves overnight.

Ian is well known for his interesting and delicious bread combinations.   I had taken his BPOC SD and made it into an even stranger bread by replacing his Semolina with 5% each; WW, Whole Rye and Whole Spelt.  For his bacon, cheese onion and potato I used; home made apple smoked pork jowl, ancient white vapor cheddar, caramelized onions and potato flakes.  The bread came out beautiful inside and out and was just plain delicious.  Definitely one of the 10 breads in my top 5 (actually it is one of the top 3).

This bread is based on a recipe simply titled Roggenbrot (rye bread) from a cookbook called "Was kocht ma Guats in Schnaitsee".  I can't come up with an English translation for this phrase that has quite the same ring to it as the original Bavarian, but the gist is, "Good things we’re cooking in Schnaitsee."  The entire book is handwritten, accompanied by sketched artwork and favorite food-related sayings of the various recipe authors.   

I've been making as many things as I can with oranges to try to use up this past years crop before donating the rest to the food bank.  So I've been  making orange marmalade.  Several years ago I forgot that I had marmalade on the stove and it nearly burned but it was just darkly caramelized like a flan.  So marmalade in this house now comes light, medium and dark just like the bread crust and crumb does.  No wonder jam and bread go so well together.  I think it was MiniOven that said when you think the bread is done, leave it in the oven 5 more minut

A blend of Seigle d’Auvergne and Borodinski where diastatic malt is used in the dough on the French side and non diastatic malt with scalded rye berries is used on the Russian side.  Thank goodness no retardation is required, no matter how nice it would be, to produce a nearly classic clash of multicultural bread with different colored malts and multi grain flours that ends up being slightly unique in the end - in a peaceful and united way.   The loaf rose well during final proof but the spring was more of a sprawl.  The crust is chewy the crumb is moist, soft and quite