Blog posts

My wife loves focaccia. One of her favorite snacks is a naked piece of focaccia topped only with its pre-bake sprinkling of coarse sea salt.  We've been making focaccia for about a decade, using a bread machine recipe, and our Zo on dough cycle. Once fermented, I'd stretch the dough onto a half-sheet pan, and bake it in the oven. Here's a link to a focaccia bake I posted in the first month after I'd joined TFL.

Hello All,

I began writing this account travelling back to the UK, as follows:

Monday 21st August 2012; 14:32, UK time.

Last Friday I finally returned from my latest trip to China and was eager to try my hand at a rye bread after reading about some interesting ones on The Fresh Loaf.  I wanted to make one utilizing a Yeast Water starter per my baking friend DA Brownman who recently baked a master piece using a combination of a Yeast Water starter and traditional SD starter.

I've been back from a week's vacation in lovely cool Aspen and just getting things caught up.

The day before I left.  I got a sudden urge to bake in my wfo.  I don't know what brings on these urges, I'm sure there is some disfunctional reason, maybe fear of not being able to bake for a whole long week.

Update:  The round boule was wrapped in parchment and a towel for 30 hours to see what difference it might make.  It cut much cleaner and tasted twice as sour.  A quartered  pix and another one with one of the quarters sliced.

Hey all,

You haven't seen me here for the last 5 month because I don't like baking or bloging anymore, no the opposite is the case. I can't wait till end of October to be back in my own kitchen and have again the time to bake and follow the Fresh Loaf. If you are wondering what I was doing during this time, klick and have a look:

www.campingchicago.com

Happy baking

Thomas

Folding process is always to feel whenever novelty. Instantaneously to increased durability, hand feel, that is the magic seems as if. But why did was just folding, increased durability for any reason?

This is my second attempt at the multigrain Struan from Peter Reinhart’s wonderful book: Whole grain Breads. This is no easy dough to deal with, and I remember now why i have chosen to put it off for a second trial. The high proportion of soaked grains (I used some seeds too), held loosely by 100% whole wheat flour, some butter, and honey; makes for a very sticky dough.

In a way, today was “really” the first day of my retirement. Our granddaughters are back in their parents' keeping. I'm not teaching this week. I discovered a couple of changes in my cooking and baking, compared to my approach pre-retirement.

A couple weeks ago I got a new cookbook, the recently updated version of Margaret Fox’s Morning Food.  It is chock full of great recipes for muffins, scones, omelettes, fritattas and other a.m. goodies.  It is also a great read, written with humor and charm.