Blog posts

I had the pleasure of meeting a fellow TFL baker during my trip to the UK from California.  I had noticed last year on TFL that Peter (blueboy2419) baked some impressive breads with beer and mentioned a beer festival that he volunteers at every year in Liverpool, my husband’s home town.  More than a year ago, I found out that we would be in town for the beer festival, as we were going to be in the UK for my niece’s wedding.  Peter gave me information on the festival, and I bought tickets.

That was today's bake. Only one loaf, because I did go a little crazy on Friday.

2014 Dabrownman’s TFL Blog Index

1/1/2014 - New Year’s Panettone - 2014

1/3/2014 - YW SD Spelt and White Whole Wheat Miche

1/5/2014 -  Saturday Night Pizza - 1/4/2014

Our half pie / half crisp Apple New Year's Pie is made with a short crust bottom and a crisp top made with 1/3 C each almond granola, oats, sugar, flour and 4 T butter with some salt and pumpkin pie spices about 1/8th tsp each..

This is my first post ever, though I have been consulting the site for quite a while now. So hi, everybody, I'm glad to be here and hope to be a part of this awesome baking community!

This is a sourdough loaf with whole grain wheat, rye and oat flour, with chocolate and cranberries.

I have always been interested in baking but I do not own an oven at home. Occasionally, I would borrow my neighbour's small oven to bake small cakes like cupcakes, muffins and etc. However, I'm more interested in baking bread than cake, most probably because I prefer eating bread over cake. Without a proper oven, no matter how much I wanted to try and get started on bread baking, I guess it was quite impossible. Besides, I barely had time back then to bake often so buying an oven to place in my space constrained kitchen didn't seem like such a good investment.

A funny thing happened in the pastry chapter of Tartine No.3… 

Anybody have a handy cheat sheet for calculating hydration when adding ingredients like pumpkin? The Internet is full of recipes for sweet pumpkin quick bread, and the last time I forgot to account for the water content in pumpkin puree I got soup, not bread. I had a hunch that TFL would come through, and sure enough, big thanks to Karin's post here: http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/34842/dan-lepards-pumpkin-whey-bread, and to Dan Lepard's original recipe.

This is a batch of bread I baked and delivered for a regular client of mine. She is my first client outside of the market, and the only one thus far. The breads are: Olive levain, Whole Wheat multigrain, and Oatmeal bread, and 80% rye; all from Hamelman's book: (BREAD). My wife's shaping skills are improving fast! she shaped and scored some of the loaves depicted above. Can you tell? I've gotten her hooked now ;)