Blog posts

Every weekend, I bake 2-3 loaves of sourdough (usually whole wheat) for my family's weekly bread. I love sourdough, and I particularly love that I've figured out (finally) how to coax sour flavor out of our sweet New England microflora (long, cool bulk rise with a stiff starter). I absolutely hate, however, having to throw away starter when I feed it. Drives me bannanas. So I had an idea earlier this week. Why not place an ad on Craig's list and give it away?

What with spring cleaning, business at work, helping family move, my baking has been seriously curtailed the past month. This weekend, hopefully, I'll get a chance to spend a day puttering around the garden and baking a couple of batches of bread. I've redirected my enthusiasm for good bread in another direction. I recently discovered Banh Mi, Vietnamese sandwiches. My office is in an area with a number of Vietnamese shops. I've tried the sandwiches in 5 or 6 different places now and totally fallen in love.

I always wanted to test steaming a WW lean dough to see if it comes out as nice as the white enriched ones. This is a WW steamed bun with some spicy homemade biltong (kangaroo) filling :). I think it'd do better if i added some...cake flour? ..will be softer. Nevertheless it was nice and chewy.

"My all time favorite is a blue cheese and walnut bread with 25% toasted waluts..." The Bread Baker's Apprentice, P. 234 Good place to start. This bread was/is truly amazing-- I more or less followed the proportions except I used the WW SD starter and added 25% WW flour to the final dough. Blue cheese was Stilton (Costco). Walnuts from Trader Joe's. This was some serious bread. Dinner was Lasagne coi Carciofi, Artichoke Lasagna...ooh baby...but thats another story.

I am going to try linking to some pictures. Please be patient with me. These are pictures of a starter I am experimenting with.

Friday night is often Pizza night in our house.

Well, Pesach and Unleavened Bread is over and it is time to get the bread ingredients out of storage.

Been a while since I was able to post. Have been super busy. Having a blast at the bakery job. The railroad job? All I can say is that I still have it and it is paying the bills. I have been browsing the rec.food.sourdough newsgroup a lot lately. One of the messages I really found interesting was one concerning a 30+ year old sourdough starter packet. It seems that one of the regular posters on the group found an old packet of unopened starter in one of their sourdough books.

All things require fine tuning and experimentation. This time I used more coals--including some mesquite which burns really hot, moved the grill to the lee side of the house (out of the wind)and did not bother with water of any kind (no water in wood fired ovens, right?). I did throw a couple water soaked wood chips through the air vent. The temperature inside got up to 600+. I was resolved not to do anything that wood cause the temp inside the grill to drop so, no water and no opening the grill to peek. In my oven, at 450 the bread takes 40-45 mins. I figured 30-35 mins in the grill.

what i refer to as 'rye light', naturally leavened, organic, and 100% hand made... i baked seven of these yesterday, 3 lbs each. pictured are half-loaves.

We had guests over for Saturday night dinner. Here's two of the poolish baguettes I baked, along with a very buttery Brioche that we ate for dessert with lemon curd and raspberries.