Blog posts

Still no baking... much to busy on everything else for now, although it's really starting to bug me that I'm not making wonderful smells in the kitchen!

All the T-111 siding and trim is now on...

A newly minted yeast showed up on my grocer's shelves last week. Made specifically for pizza crust by Fleischmann's, a venerable yeast company now owned by Associated British Foods, Pizza Crust Yeast promises a fully risen crust in just 30 minutes. Turbo-charged in other words. I just had to give it a spin.

hi,

Im a beginner at baking...cooking actually.

Id like to know if there is a permanent substitute that i can use  for egg as im vegetarian, so it seems like i have to give up on lots of good recipes and takes a lot of ti,e looking up for substitutes!!!!

i want to know an egg substitute in cakes, breads and tarts. Please help.

Charisma

I thought I'd give a brief update on what I've been tinkering with in my kitchen over the weekend. I baked a nice rye loaf on Saturday morning - it's based on my regular 70% rye recipe, but I added some toasted sunflower seeds and whole-rye flour to a cold soaker. The dough is a breeze to mix and work with, without being terribly sticky or otherwise up to no good. You can find the recipe here. The loaf is pictured below:

I baked some sourdough chocolate donuts and heart shaped muffins this weekend.  At last the fresh cherries are flowing so I chopped up a pound of fresh Bing Cherries to fold into the batter (and some chocolate chips too).  

A lurker finally comes out. I just baked my first loaves from my "new" (about 5 days old) wild yeast starter. They came out great. I used Shiao Ping's version of Chad Robertson's Country Sourdough. I tweaked the schedule a bit to fit my personal commitment, but generally followed her schedule and formula. I did replace about 20% of the total flour with King Arthur Traditional Whole Wheat Flour.

I have a wolfgang mill and would like to know if I would be losing

much nutritional value by milling 5 pounds of wheat at a time and keeping it 

in an air tight refrigerated container.  Is there anything I should be aware of

before I do it ?...   It would be used up in about two weeks and much more 

convenient for me. 

Thanks

Two months ago I bought a new oven so I had to learn how it works, I mean what is the best setup for sourdough heart baking. This led me to change my setup: no more covered baking!

Have you ever seen the incredible oven spring, great crust color, beautiful ears you have with a professional steam injected deck oven? Just take a look at these photos from Wally's excellent post "My Excellent Adventures at King Arthur Flour".

I've been baking the San Francisco Sourdough from Michel Suas' Advanced Bread and Pastry frequently over the past few months. It's very good. This weekend, I decided to try a couple of his other sourdough breads.

I have some experience baking Jewish Sour Ryes and German-type rye breads. Suas' formula for “Sourdough Rye Bread” (Advanced Bread and Pastry, pp. 212-213) seems to me to be for a French-style “Pain de Seigle,” although Suas does not label it as such. It uses a stiff levain identical to the one Suas uses for his “San Francisco Sourdough,” but then the final dough is 60% rye flour. Overall, the rye content is 52% of the total flour. The overall dough hydration is 70%.