Blog posts

I realized that I've been a member here for a year now, and can hardly believe it!  The old saying "time flies when you're having fun"  couldn't be truer.  I've learned so many helpful techniques here - and I'm so thrilled to have my healthy active starter.  (It's also about to have its first birthday! ) 

I decided that as I've reached this one year mark, it's a good time to start a blog and learn how to post pictures here. Wish me luck, I'm pretty hopeless with the computer.

Rose Levy Beranbaum has put together a step-by-step guide to making bread, plus essential equipment and ingredients and 8 classic recipes for Epicurious. The primer looks good. Except for one part. I would revise the list of "essential equipment" for bread baking by including only the following:

Absolutely Essential:

The Roasted Potato Bread from Jeffrey Hamelman's "Bread" is another bread that has been on my "to bake list" for a long, long time. It is a yeasted, lean bread made with pâte fermentée. It uses a mix of bread and whole wheat flour, and, of course, roasted potatoes.

I made these in the recommended, traditional "pain fendu" (split bread) shape. It looked cool in the pictures and gave me an excuse to buy yet another wooden rolling pin, because my others are too thick, and the dowling I have is too thin. I'm sure you all understand.

I decided to revive my dormant Carl Griffith's 1847 Oregon Trail starter last week, so I had a lot of nice ripe starter by the end of the week on hand that I wanted to use up. I used an excel spreadsheet I made up for Flo's 1-2-3 sourdough to use up any amount of excess ripe sourdough starter, except in this case, I needed to increase the hydration since I was using all whole wheat flour in the final dough, so it became 1-2.25-3 bread (78% hydration final dough).

Susan's "Faux Deli Rye"

75g firm starter

210g water

25g rye flour

275g high-gluten flour (if using bread flour or AP, adjust the water)

1 tsp caraway seed powder (optional, but good)

1 tbsp caraway seeds

6g salt

it is funny how new recipes or experiments later on turn into 'production bread'. I have making rustic bread almost in production now, trying to become a week-baker instead of a weekend-only baker. That is one of the current challenges.

I'll have to give this sourdough recipe another try...it is very tasty!  I bulk fermented it overnite in my very cool bathroom!  Though I did not succeed in this loaf turning out the way I felt it should...I think it definately deserves a little more effort next time! 

I used a mixture of Dark and Golden Raisins.  With a light sprinkle of brown sugar and cinnamon!

A busy morning today.  First up was a birthday party for my son at a local rollerskating rink.  The high point was the Spy vs. Spy theme cake that dstroy decorated:

Based on this image.  Note that the wick of the bomb was a candle.

Last week, I made baguettes using Pat's (proth5) recipe. They were good. I was amazed at the open crumb I got from a 65% hydration dough. See my blog entry:

http://tfl.thefreshloaf.com/node/10852/baguette-crumb-65-hydration-dough