Blog posts

Well you may be interested to hear from the flooded area of Queensland.  I live in Toowoomba where this week we have had terrible scenes of raging floods and loss of life, as well as destruction and immense devastation.  One of the two major creeks that overflowed and became a raging torrent is just 50 meters from my back gate.  In my lifetime I have never seen this amount of rainfall over so wide-spread an area.  I'm not sure that anyone has ever seen it in this country.  Toowoomba is atop the Great Dividing Range.

Baking Pizza in a Round Boy Oven

I asked Karl to fire up a Round Boy Oven so we can show you some pictures of the oven being used. I also asked him for some tips or tricks he could offer on using the oven. Karl gave me three tips as he told me "There is nothing to making pizza in the oven. It is simple.".
Tip # 1 get the oven roof to white hot.                                 

just recently someone wrote in with a recipe that was part sourdough .. part yeast. they said they didn't have enough starter for the whole recipe. it was labeled "part sourdough" or "not quite sourdough". I thought I had printed it out but can't find it. can you please re post it or send it to me direct e mail mickicoll@msn.com ? thanks.

I've been trying to teach my hands to shape loaves. It's going slowly. There remains a lot more learning.

I found the following video and recipe on Grist.  I thought others might enjoy.  The film is by Daniel Klein in his The Perennial Plate Series.  I enjoyed the bakery footage and appreciated that he didn't hide the fact that in home cooking, not everything turns out perfectly.  http://www.grist.org/article/food-2011-01-11-rustica-bakery-bread-pudding

I mentioned this on another thread but thought I would give it life on its own here.

Single-acting baking powder first hit the marketplace in the mid-1850's. The Gold Rush was still rushing, and John Chisum's cattle drives were at their peak, repleat with chuck wagon and cook--always called "Cookie" regardless his origins.

Hello, This is my first attempt at making a miche, substituting a 13% spring wheat bread flour and a 75%-sifted Red Fife whole-wheat flour for the high-extraction flour called for in the formula.

Here is the result (springy! wasn't expecting that):

There's been some discussion about the baker's percentage formula for the Tartine Loaf in Chad Robertson's book. I thought I'd create a spreadsheet that clarified the formula. As related on page 48 of his book, he gives the baker's percentage but only in terms of the final ingredients. The formula doesn't include the flour and water in the leaven. So while he states the bread has a 75% hydration, it is actually higher, 77% The formula also makes it difficult to convert the recipe into smaller loaves.