Blog posts

I have been reading a bit about the various ways in which home bakers use a cast iron combo cooker to produce some spectacular loaves, and was struck by the posts by people who skip the "pre heat" step (either for safety or fuel efficiency purposes), and seem to see no issue in the final bake.  Given it would seem much easier to work with a room temperature combo cooker vs a 500 degree version, I wanted to do a side by side comparison to see if there was much of a difference in the finished product.

Yesterday I made a from-scratch deep dish pizza using the recipe in The Great Chicago Pizza Cookbook. The crust turned out beautifully, or so I thought until I tried to cut it. It wasn't burnt, but was hard as a rock! We had to saw through it and it was just too much chewy to enjoy the rest of the ingredients. 

Does anyone have any suggestions? The recipe calls for 1/2 c of yellow cornmeal and I wasn't sure if that was the issue or if I should forego par baking or what? There are photos below. Any and all advice welcome!!! 

Today I baked up some levain boules and a Tartine Country Loaf.  I can't shake this sourdough kick since returning from San Francisco.  I tweaked my roaster/steaming method a bit to enhance the Tartine crust caramelization.  I am very happy with the results.  The adjustments to the steaming method really made the crust thin and crispy, and added a more complex flavour.

The combination of dreary weather foiling my landscape photography and a new camera resulted in a post bake shutterbug frenzy. 

Another batch of Pane Maggiore. This time with no intention I made another change. i built the levains (1/2 rye sour stiff/1/2 white wheat liquid) and got exhausted by mix time so i retarded them to finish the following day. I decreased my total pre fermented flour in the recipe to about 15% as this dough gets very active and this would give the time for folds in accordance with ferment times. 1 hour autolyse followed by a soft finished mix. Then three sets of folds at 50 minute intervals and divided at the 3 hour mark.

I have been skiing five days a week now for a while, so not much time to browse TFL. My baking thoughts have turned from bread to sweets. this is a three layer orange chiffon cake from ITJB, filled with apricot jam and chocolate butter cream and iced with the same chocolate. The chocolate didn't adhere to the orange slices, so I painted around them. YUMM!

I made the Tartine country loaf on two separate occasions and both didn't turn out right. Maybe the Tartine country loaf was an overly ambitious first try at a bread made with a starter? Before making my first Tartine country loaf, I had never made nor maintained a starter before nor had I ever made a leaven. But I followed all the directions laid out in the Tartine Bread book. When my starter was rising and falling predictably, I made the leaven. I tested the leaven and it floated so I guessed it was ready to use.

I wanted to try a seeded sourdough with a flax seed soaker, so i found the recipe below.  I made a number of variations along the way, due to preference and timing.  I noted the changes I made at the right of the original recipe.I wanted more of a whole wheat loaf, so I changed the recipe to add much more whole wheat and used a whole wheat starter. My husband and I really enjoyed the result.  It was crusty, but chewy, and the seeds inside really added a lot of tangy taste to the loaf.