Blog posts

My new 'Wellness Mat' I ordered it from Amazon.com.   OMG...why didn't I get one of these earlier.  I'm loving it.  They are expensive but sooo worth it...check out all the pluses on this mat.   I sometimes stand all day long in the kitchen.  What relief this mat provides.  I couldn't be more pleased.  I ordered the 2x6 and it lays across my sink and L shaped baking area perfect.  No more tired legs.

Sending this to Yeastspotting.

Index for my blog entries

I recently asked TFL how to score Richard Bertinet's Pain aux Olives to achieve the effect shown in his book, Dough: http://www.thefreshloaf.com/keyword/bread-scoring-score-richard-bertinet-pains-gourmands-2006-larousse-olive-bread

I made a version of it this weekend, and they were right: It's rolled and the scored on the vertical.

My series of San Francisco-style sourdough bread bakes has featured several variations of levain elaboration, leaving the final dough ingredients and procedures essentially constant. Today's variation involved using a firm starter to activate the stock starter and building the stiff levain which is mixed in the final dough in three steps, rather than two. In addition, rather than retarding an intermediate build, I retarded the stiff levain.

Today I baked some bagels.  Again, I used a variation on Stan's Krakowski formula made famous in the Wall Street Journal, except I used 25% Bread Flour and 75% Sir Lancelot, and shaped them without the twist.  They were great.  My sister loved them.  And my wife (who shaped most of them) paid them the ultimate compliment: "Just like the bagels at Russ & Daughters".

Hello everyone,
When checking out last Friday’s Yeastspotting post, I saw two posts for Granville Island Beer Bread
(both breads looked fantastic!).
Looking at the posts, I saw The Bread Baking Babes selected this bread for the April challenge.
Granville Island Brewing’s beers are available at a nearby store (perfect!) –
I thought it would be fun to pick up some of this beer and participate in this month’s challenge  :^)

This week I have cooked up a couple of breads to test my skills using my powerful sourdough and 00 flour.

Sourdough / Natural Leaven:

I spent a few days refreshing this firm starter for the panettone. Feeding 4 times a day, every 4hrs.

San Francisco SD:

It is a stunning Autumn morning – crisp and clear. Outside a container of dough gently rises and for the first time all week I have a chance to sit and write a post for the blog.

I read about and saw pictures of gorgeous flaxseed ryes coming out of members' ovens last week and I thought I'd give it a try, but I don't like to bring new flours or specialty ingredients into the house until I use up much of what I already have. Such is life in a small New York City kitchen. Finding no rye and no flaxseeds, flaxseed rye was pretty much out of the question. There was some flaxseed meal, though, and a nice bag of Central Milling whole wheat, so I went that way.