Blog posts

Franko had me drooling with his post and kind sharing of his pate recipe.  No question about it I love pate - all kinds.  Now that the larder is full of some fine bread to spread some kind of pate on  - it was time to make some.  The French are masters of making what they have on hand into some kind of Pate Maison - and it tasting great - especially on bread or toast.

I think I did better this time, with the extra half-recipe - no deflating!

Someone made the very cool suggestion of using purple potatoes, so now I have to try that!

I did try to shape these, the second loaf worked just fine but this first one broke apart when I rolled it up. Probably just me being a bit too rough with the dough. There is a good reason for my username.

Sending this to Yeastspotting.

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Just thought I'd share a link because I always have a hard time buying banneton proofing baskets in Australia and when I do find them they are so expensive. I purchased these on Ebay for $13.00 ea with free delivery, they arrived in the mail 8 days later. They have a large range of sizes and I think they deliver free to the States also.

In an effort to practice my shaping techniques I decided to make Pain de Campagne from Peter Reinharts The Bread Baker's Apprentice. I think I've got shaping loaves down (as in shape and stick in a pan where the pan does most of the work), and I'm on my way to perfecting boules but I haven't really tried any other shapes. This recipe seemed pretty straight forward since it's basically just salt, flour yeast and water. I made a preferment 3 days before mixing the final dough, and used 1.5oz Rye instead of whole wheat. The book says the recipe makes 3 loaves or multiple rolls.

Every time I venture to Whole Foods I manage to find something interesting to add to my bread baking and last weekend was no exception.  I was already planning on making bread with some fresh chopped cherries so when I saw some 100% Cherry Juice on the shelf I couldn't resist buying it and using it in place of most of the water.

I made an enormous ciabatta weighing nearly 1 kilo. I used an 18hr-fermented biga starter and a combination of medium and weak flours. This thing was massive!

Biga:
400g '00' flour from Shipton Mill
160g cold water
1.3g Instant yeast

Final dough:
Fermented biga
320g cold water
200g plain flour (9.4% protein)
24g Extra virgin olive oil
12g Non-diastatic malt powder
12g Salt
2g diastatic malt powder 

olive oil for S&f.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__FwAfWl1Cc&list=UUKhVduFt-2pU5O8XcRKKTIQ&index=1&feature=plcp

After the last white bread bake using the Pharaoh’s Mastaba, we went back to a 67% whole grain; rye and wheat bread with rye and wheat sprouts and a variety of add-ins and seeds including wheat germ, flax, coriander, pumpkin, hemp, rosemary, chia, cumin and red rye malt baked in another variation of the Chacon.