Blog posts

Hello fellow fresh loafers.  Hope you are all doing well, and I wanted to wish you all a Happy Thanksgiving in advance if you are in the States!  Anyway, sorry for the long absence from TFL.  I have been busy with changes in my life and have not had much time to bake or blog about it until about now.  I have been pondering some things about bread baking which I will not reveal as of yet, but in my absence my wife and I had done the Fast Metabolism Diet, which basically says that you cannot eat the following foods for 28 days: alcohol, caffeine, sugar, dairy, wheat, soy,

Mirror, mirror on the wall, whats the best Christmas pudding of them all?

I am dedicating myself to sampling a whole range of Christmas puddings from all the major supermarkets (UK based) to choose the best one - I am gonna do all the hard work, so you don't have to - see how good I am? :)

First review is up on my blog here

The pie on top is a an Apple Sour Cream Pie with fresh ginger in the filling, walnuts and pecans on top and the  below is a Pear and Cranberry spiced with cloves.  Both are a little different for Thanksgiving and a nice break from the usual apple, pumpkin and pecan pie.

2013 The Fresh Loaf Dabrownman’s Blog

1/4/2013 - Panettone - The Last Bake of 2012

Nézz be hozzám!

The shorter daylights and colder temperatures have been affecting my bread baking. It has slowed down fermentation resulting in me misjudging the time required to fully proof the bread. Not to mention that it is already dark by the time I am done baking making it harder to take a nice picture of the loaf.

Anyway, back to something simple and comforting for this week - a 50% wholewheat sourdough. A nice hearty loaf with stronger flavours contributed by the wholewheat flour and the levain used. 

Great bread! We loved it, I'll have to make it one more time to get the moisture content right as the crumb in my version came out a spongy. But I'm amazed to get this much rise in such a high whole grain bread. The interesting thing about this bread is that it uses both a bread starter and also yeast at the final stage. The dough rose on schedule!

I didn't have the Spelt 1150 flour so I used a mix of pure spelt flour with bread flour. I guessed from what I read on the web.

The dough was very wet and soggy, I bowl mixed and later kneaded with a hand paddle.

We often cut it into bread sticks with a pizza cutter, this one had an excellent texture and flavor. Crisp, crunchy crust, chewy on the inside and gooey on the top, almost like a sauce-less pizza!

Well it's technically over.  My experiment has concluded.  Yesterday was the last of the farmer's markets and I made it to 21 of 26 of the markets with bread to trade.  I've made some friends and had a really good time trading food for food.  In honor I offered my loaves as gifts yesterday in appreciation of the farmers who were happy and willing to trade with me.  This didn't go so well as they still pushed food at me.  But i tried. Furthermore they have added a winter market to start next week so I guess it never ends.  Yay.

that baker's have to EAT their mistakes... I am okay with this one.  I used a chewy roll recipe.. attempting to get those big holes I envy... but "Lucille Ball" was in the kitchen!!!

  This looked promising... but the jiggliness was 

a scary factor... I knew it would either flatten or stick... welllllll..... 

It chose to stick... totally....but the real