Blog posts

Pineapple juice is a simple solution to a problem that many people encounter while trying to start a sourdough seed culture from scratch. Oftentimes, a new culture will appear to start off very strong, only to die a day or two later. The early expansion is caused by a prolific gas-producing bacterium which many mistake for yeast. Pineapple juice can be added to flour instead of water at the beginning, to insure against unwanted bacteria and the problems they leave in their wake.

Todays Bake included the Five grain bread, Pain Au Levain, semolina baguettes and the vermont sourdough (no pictures sry) out of hamelmans book. But upon looking at the 5 grain recipe i only came up with 4 grains. If anyone could clarify for me that would be awesome. I stuck with the batard shape as i will be picking up a few wicker baskets soon. al so if anyone has any ideas on loaf shapes let me know! enjoy comments questions and whatever else are always welcome. ( sorry about the medicore pictures they came off my iphone.)

This is the half of dough I saved from yesterdays Basic Italian Loaf...I put it in the frig. overnite and shaped it while slightly cool.  Gave it my rolled in the soft floured linen for final proofing...which helps me to achieve a rounder loaf!  It was then placed under my steaming pan and given a 5 second burst of steam.  The oven stone and lid were preheated 500F. Placed the loaf in and  turned down to 485 for 30mins...lid removed and continued to bake aprox. another 5-10 min. till nicely browned.

This is a Basic Italian Bread recipe that came with my Oblong La Cloche.....I added a little poolish.  I placed half the dough into the frig for tomorrow!  There is no oil in this Italian bread.  The recipe actually stated to add yeast to 2 cups of "hot water"!!!  I used a cool room temp.

"Do or do not...there is no try." Yoda

And so it is finally time to actually make a "white flour" milling run. This is a project that I have been mulling over for some time - and it is not a small one.

Todays Bake  included a few baguettes and I tried out the Beer and barley bread from hamelmans book. This is a solid recipe and i opted to use guinness as the beer because it definitly my favourite to drink on its own and figured it wuld give the bread great flavour. I would definitly recommend this recipe to anyone looking for a semi whole wheat bread with lots of flavour! Questions, thoughts, comments are always welcome.

When the Rosemary blooms I love to make Rosemary-Lemon Bread.  This is Beth Hensperger recipe in her bread machine cookbook.  I have made a few changes by adding some whole wheat flour and left out the hazelnuts and gluten.  I use my garden lemons and rosemary.  I hand mix and let the bread rise slowly in a cool room.  I also baked this one in my bell la cloche at 475 for 35 min. uncovered and baked 10min.

I am still extremely new to this forum, as well as to bread baking in general.  I am enjoying reading all of your posts, and appreciate greatly the opportunity to learn from your successes and/or tribulations.  I am sticking with straight doughs for now, and working them only by hand, in the hope that I will develop my feel for the dough. 

For these loaves, I used the following recipe:

400g KA Bread Flour

200g Semolina Flour

12g SAF instant yeast

1T Diastatic Malt Powder

2t Salt, dissolved in

420g water at 125 degrees

You know what they say... Life is a journey. But have you ever been pulled down a path that you otherwise would have walked on by? That's what happened to me when I started playing with sourdough. I didn't even like sourdough, or so I thought until about seven and a half years ago. I was watching the food network one day, and Daniel Leader appeared as a guest on Cooking Live. He was demonstrating how to make a sourdough starter from nothing but flour and water. How fascinating! I had no idea you could do that.