Blog posts

This chacon is a tribute to Eric Hanner.  His gifts to the world were many and his passion for balking was great.  His fine character attributes included his generosity that made him willing to help and teach others what he knew.  Eric’s legacies are many and this bake commemorates them.  He was a giant and this chacon is especially large to recognize his largess.

Being a home baker, one of the most amazing things for me to achieve in my baking is consistency. As a home baker one gets rarely the opportunity to bake big batches, and the natural limits are oven capacity and proving space.

During the last four weeks I have been asked twice to bake for larger occasions, and I managed to churn out about 70 braided rolls on each occasion. Great fun, and also quite a learning curve in managing resources and dough handling.

Taken from my greedybread blog.....

So excuse me if It sounds like i know you...:)

Though hopefully, i will soon...

I love this bread! it’s so tasty and its great even after 5 days!

Scrummy!!

What more could you ask for?

Sorry, I have been a little quiet in the last week but I just have not felt yeasty at all!!

Inspired by Karin's (hanseata) pan de muerto, I took her recipe, adapted it, and transformed it into a disaster---well, not entirely. I was content with the shape, the crust, and the crumb, but the flavour was... Bleh! Ick! Eww! And other interjections denoting disgust.

My wife is having a girls weekend in Barcelona with her friends, so the kids and I are drowning our sorrows in dough. This 10% rye boule was made with a combination of techniques from David Snyder's San Joaquin Sourdough and txfarmer's 36 hour baguettes. Crispy, crunchy crust and soft but chewy crumb with medium sour tang. Very satisfying.

Yesterday I had the chance to do a bake of Eric's Favorite Rye following Floyd * Baking Eric's Favorite Rye * and Andy's suggestion *here* that it would be a nice way to honor the memory of Eric Hanner. Eric was a great guy and friend so of course I wanted to make any sort of contribution I could towards that.

We are visiting our son in Las Vegas for Thanksgiving, and I'm introducing him to sourdough baking. This has entailed three challenges. The first is the demands of baking with a houseful of family. This is wonderful, but the scheduling complexity is greater by several orders of magnitude. The second is that Joel does not have a mixer. This is a very minor issue, but it does require adapting some recipes I am accustomed to making with machine mixing. The third challenge is baking in a gas oven.

Every year, we spend Thanksgiving in Palm Springs, California with my boyfriend's parents. The weather there is warm and there are many blue, cloudless days to enjoy. We decided to do an alternative Thanksgiving dinner this year without turkey, cranberries, pumpkin pie, or any of the usual fixings. Instead, we had a nice rib roast, which coasted to 120 degrees F slowly inside a 200 degree oven.