Blog posts

It was another weekend baking binge as I experimented with local herbs for my pesto ciabatta. I subscribe to Dan Lepard's philosophy to use local ingredients and there was really no way I can continue to use herbs imported from Europe. I experiment with a local herb called Laksa Leaf. It is so named as it is used mainly in this local dish. The flavor of the Ciabatta with the Laksa herb pesto was out of this world.

After a week full of "disaster breads", I am happy to report that I was *finally* able to produce a few loaves that didn't make me laugh when they came out of the oven :) So now I will post some photos as evidence so that when I create my next major flop or paperweight, I can come back and be inspired to try, try again... ***The final results of my baking day: - - ***One of the secrets to my newfound abilit

I didn't really intend to become a sourdough fanatic, but it seems that's what I make 80% of the time these days. The pound of SAF instant yeast I bought in February is only halfway gone, despite my having baked just about every weekend since then. Maybe it's because I've had a devil of a time getting my starter to get a decent "sour" and I've been obsessed with getting it right.

My parents were up from Atlanta this weekend, so with five folks in the house, I baked up a storm. We had pizza Friday night, poolish baguettes Saturday night, and on Sunday I baked five loaves: * Two panned loaves of whole-wheat sourdough. * Two loaves of potato, rosemary and roasted garlic sourdough (in the "fendu" shape) * One panned loaf of whole-grain and seed whole-wheat sourdough. Pictures below: The two loaves of whole-wheat with the multi-grain loaf in the center.

I made a couple of mediocre loaves of my daily bread today. Too little salt? Something wasn't spot on. We ended up using much of it as dunkers for a batch of white trash chili cheese fondue tonight. Sunday we hit Winco, a warehouse grocery store kind of like Food 4 Less. They had Saf Yeast for 2.50 a pound! I couldn't believe it: I usually pay 4 times that for 4 ounces at the local grocery store. Needless to say, I picked some up.

Hello all, Greetings from Singapore from another bread fanatic. This is a wonderful website for learning and I have learnt so much from it. Thanks. I baked some Ciabatta today. The pics are in http://www.angelfire.com/planet/tomsbread/index.htm Tomsbread

This recipe is the result of a mixture of ideas from a few different recipes.

Last week I managed to try a few other recipes with mixed results... 1)Rustic Bread Very nice loaves of bread. Delicious!!!

I was originally going to try the Italian bread from BBA this weekend, but I forgot to write down the biga recipe so I had to scrap that idea. So instead I decided to come here and look up something else to try. The victim of my baking experiment would end up being Floyd's daily bread recipe. As other people did, I found the dough to be extremely wet. I had to add another 1/2 cup of flour for the dough to come together. It was still very slack, but I could still work it.

A big baking weekend, now that my oven is fixed:

Nice and sour 100% whole wheat sandwich bread

Pain au levain (actually, Jeffrey Hammelman's Vermont Sourdough, but I live in Watertown, MA, so technically, I suppose it should be "Watertown Sourdough")

Baguettes (using the BBA's French bread formula which employs a pate fermente)

Whole wheat sourdough with raisins, pecans and a cinnamon sugar swirl.