Blog posts

Today I made the basic sourdough from BBA with 50% semolina. I also did an extremely long autolyse and increased the hydration about 1 oz. 

The dough was pretty hard to handle so i was not thrilled with my shaping job, but the crumb turned out pretty well. 

 Lapsang Souchong iced tea with a splash of tart cherry juice is one of my favorite drinks. I think the smoky tea and the cherry play very nicely together. This bread is my first attempt at recreating that combination in bread form. I guess I'm on a bit of tea bread kick....

A few weeks ago I wrote about this formula, and after many suggestions from readers out there, I followed up with two bakes.  This post shows the outcome when including all the flours in the long autolyse, based on suggestions from Khalid and David.  Essentially the method was the same as previous with these two exceptions: for bake 2, the autolyse included all the water and all the flours as listed plus 3 gm salt, and for bake 3 the salt was eliminated in the autolyse and the overall hydration w

Despite the unseasonably cool weather we've been enjoying, finally this morning I was reminded its springtime by the blooming sage in our herb garden.

Comfort food: Toasted Cheese sandwich

A slice each of Sharp Cheddar, Pepper Jack and a teaspoon of catsup smoothed between on...

I saw on thefreshloaf people talking about brioche feuilletee (I think the topic was started by andythebaker), specifically this link: http://www.parispatisseries.com/2011/05/03/la-patisserie-des-reves-brioche-feuilletee/

Hi bakers everywhere,

this is my first bake in my temporary kitchen here in Perugia, Italy. I saw the recipe on Paul Hollywood's Bread on the BBC and, as he had stuffed it with Italian flavours, it seemed a suitable thing to try. I was dubious of the little oven I have here, which looks to be older than I am (and my oven therometer is still in transit) but, on the whole, I was happy with the result. It's pretty easy to make, and as light as a feather, dripping in melted cheese and salty prosciutto. Well done Paul Hollywood!

As Breadsong already posted about, this past weekend the Bakery Congress 2013, the largest annual baking industry event in Western Canada, was held in Vancouver, BC.  As tradeshows go it was cheap and I was looking for an excuse for a bike ride on a beautiful sunny day, so I pedaled over to the PNE to take a look.  

With mother's day at hand I decided to give her a bread-baking starterset from weekendbakery.com - a 750 gram round cane banneton, some flour, a mixing spatula, a lame, and a doughscraper, yeast and a recipe. Of course, that was the perfect excuse to order some more supplies for myself. Namely a 1 kg oval cane banneton, two 750 gram bannetons out of pressed wood material, round and oval and a lame for myself and a dough scraper.

I wanted to bake a hearty Rye for many reasons. Firstly, to satisfy my Rye craving, and secondly to serve as a rye altus for further rye baking.

So, I have baked a 3-stage 80% Rye from Jeffery Hamelman’s book: BREAD, and it was high time that I bake it in my Pullman pan lookalike. The recipe calls for medium rye, and since I didn’t have any, I sifted my organic store bought Whole Rye flour. The sifting resulted in almost medium rye flour, and so I added back some of the bran to emulate medium Rye flour consistency.