Blog posts

     I've been hung up on this line from Tartine Bread regarding the Country Rye ever since I read it:  "Use a medium-fine grind of whole-rye flour as opposed to a course pumpernickel rye, which will yield a very different result."  And that's it, end of paragraph, end of story.  He just leaves that hanging there like I'm not going to wonder day after day just what sort of "very different result" it would yield.  Yeah... no, that won't do at all.

Celebrating Rye Breads

Hi all,

My baking this weekend was good, but not novel.  I baked more of Sylvia's sandwich buns to have with Bulgogi.  Still I feel like I should contribute a blog post this week.  So, here's one of the many excellent recipes using stale bread (a plentiful commodity in our household).  "Panzanella" (which I believe means "Nell's trousers" in Italian) is a Florentine salad, according to Wikipedia.  

Inspired by the recent blogs about Pane di Altamura by Franko

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/24102/pane-di-altamuramy-ongoing-project

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/24172/first-success-altamura-project

and David Snyder

I've managed to fit in a mid-week bake, its actually much easier than you might think.

Decided make up a Pear Cider Bread, figuring that the extra sugars make the fermentation a bit easier. Mixed everything up as soon as I got home from work, stetch and fold a few times and leave to bulk ferment for a few hours. Shape before going to bed and bake first thing in the morning. It takes me an hour to get ready for work, and only 40 minutes to bake a loaf of bread - perfect!!

These are a couple of the bakes from my ongoing attempt at combining methods from Whole Grain Breads and Tartine Bread into a simple, mostly whole wheat sourdough.  The bread is turning out pretty well - crackled crust, soft, springy crumb, lovely flavor.  It's amazing what even 15% white flour will do for the texture of a whole wheat bread.  The hardest part is just making up my mind about the details!