Blog posts

Been working on my own sourdough formula named after where I live and from where the culture was grown. It's not finished so I won't be releasing the formula just yet.

Turned out very well this time although I think I need to increase the hydration a tiny bit as I want a more holey crumb. Maybe make the levain a bit more stiff for increased sourness too.

My first attempt at these loaves from Daniel T.

I made Poliane Miche from BBA last year, tried Hamelman's version this weekend. A lot more water, still used Golden Buffalo flour, came out of the oven yesterday morning.

We're back from Portland after a relaxing week in the city and at the beach. 

It's really hard to decide where to have breakfast - at Stumptown Downtown for the best espresso (and good bagels or decent pastries) or the Pearl Bakery for the best bread and pastries (and decent espresso). We opted for the Pearl Bakery.

Gibassier and Cappuccino at Pearl Bakery

Baked my second sourdough ever yesterday, and I couldn't be happier with the results.

I used the 1-2-3 Method described by Shiao-Ping at Sourdough Companion. I was persuaded by its simplicity--no traditional recipe to follow, just a ratio.

The starter was a 50% hydration that had sat in the back of my fridge totally untouched for at least 5 months. It was based on Reinhart's starter formula in BBA; after a single failure of a loaf, I pushed it behind the mayo and forgot about it while pursuing other projects.

I have been focusing on sourdough to the exclusion of all other breadmaking since May.  I finally decided to make Kaiser Rolls from "bread baker's apprentice." by Reinhart.  This is the first recipe I made when I started trying to become a better "artisan" baker.  We spent a month in Austria in 2006 and loved the bread over there so much that I got this cookbook.  I picked it because of the many good shaping pictures.  I knew I could make good tasting bread but I wanted to move on in my technique to well-shaped bread too.

I did it: finally found a way of resolving a couple of oven problems and made a nice loaf of whole wheat bread from Leader's book. 

This 4th of July the party at my house was my kid's party! As I looked out across my yard at these adults that I watched grow I thought about how independent they are! My son a C.P.A. and my daughter graduating next year from college and already doing her internship. Frank, my son's friend since playschool, working in accounting, living in Philadelphia. He has a really sweet girlfriend and I must say I am proud of him! Ray is on his way to Law School already has a degree in accounting. He also is living in Philadelphia! I am proud of him!

  Calzone "Wood Fired" of course! Mmmm...

Bread Adventures in July [finally edited to include a few pictures, and remove the original apologetic whingeing!]

This academic year seems to have gone on longer than any I can previously remember.   I still have a few assignments to mark for late submitting Hospitality students...maybe I should be getting that out of the way this weekend?   However I thought it would be more fun to write up the detail of the breads I've been making this month instead!