Blog posts

Wishing all you bakers out there a healthy and sweet New Year. This year for Rosh Hashanah I made Maggie Glezer's Pan de Calabaza. This recipe is in her book "A Blessing of Bread" which is so interesting. It tells the back stories (and  the formulas, of course) for all kinds of traditional Jewish breads from all over the world. There's babkas, pita, challahs, Lithuanian, Greek and Ethiopian breads. If you're looking for the Pan de Calabaza formula, it's been posted at least twice on this site.

Hi everyone,

I've been lurking for a very long time, and have desperately been looking for a challah that is both moist but firm, a rich color and heavy fragrance with a tenderness that lasts into the day after I've baked it. I've loved reading many of the tips and recipes that I've come across on here, and using all of your help, I think I've found a great recipe. I used it for my Rosh Hashanah loaves this year, and didn't think to take any pictures, but will do so when I make this bread again for this coming Friday.

After a two month break, I finally am baking again.  

This summer was hectic. I've been working a ton, plus there was a two week road trip around BC and western Alberta, including a few days exploring Banff and Jasper.  Truly a stunning area.  One highlight of being in that region was getting a chance to meet Skibum and try his pulla, which was fantastic.

This is a continuation of the experiment with putting partially dehydrated fruit in bread from last week's bake. The differences are that there was some rye included with the wheats in the sprouted grain, I had to retard the dough overnight due to a time conflict, and of course apples were used instead of pears.

Ready for The New Year.  L'Shana Tova!

another from hamelman's Bread. I'm finally getting the hang of my oven temperature and the proofing. This is evident from the bloom that i never use to get! 

built my starter for 16 hours as i wasnt getting much action after 12 hours...and it suddenly got bubbly at 16th hour. Would have liked to retard for final proof but timing was off so it only sat in the fridge for 3 hours.

      As I mentioned in my last post, I sprouted some whole wheat and rye and ground them in my mill a couple of weeks ago.  I wanted to make a mostly sprouted whole wheat bread since there is nothing like the flavor sprouted whole wheat imparts on a bread.

I added a little rye and some French Style flour from KAF to round out the bread and through in some cracked wheat as well.

In a recent post David Snyder mentioned that his Hamelman pain au levain would qualify for a final four if he had only one bread he could make/eat.  I suggested a few other qualifiers, including his marvelous Gosselin baguettes with an SD twist added for good measure, not to mention good flavor!

On one of the darkest days in American history; 9/11, Lucy went deep in her bag of tricks to come up with a new very dark bread indeed.  In the past year, her 2 favorite dark breads were the Really Dark Old School Sprouted Pumpernickel – In memory of Barbra, another dark day for Fresh Lofians and Lucy’s Take on Adri’s Westphalian Rye

I went through a spell of baking scones last year, but stopped when everyone in my family seemed to have their fill of them. Lately though, they have been asking for scones. I have been having really good success with my sourdough biscuits, so I decided to try my hand at sourdough scones. I have always used volume measurements for my biscuits and scones, so I'm comfortable using that method for this recipe. The starter is leftover starter straight out of my fridge. The scones turned out fluffy and flaky. Might of been even more fluffy if I had used starter that was more active.