Blog posts

Colombo, Parisian, Larraburu. These bakeries produced the bread that made “San Francisco Sourdough” unarguably the most iconic bread produced in America. They are all gone now, and while San Francisco is still (again?) home to some amazingly delicious sourdough breads, the only place to get that old-style San Francisco Sourdough bread is at the Tadich Grill restaurant. Theirs is especially made by Boudin Bakery and is not available anywhere else.

Cornmeal Mush

150g  cornmeal
30g butter
60g honey
250g milk

Dough

500g unbleached flour (I put in 150 g high extraction flour for part of the 500 g)
1¼tsp instant yeast 
10g salt
150g water

Glaze

1 egg
1tsp water
pinch of salt
pinch of sugar
cornmeal

Makes 18 buns

1. Heat milk until almost boiling and pour over the rest of the ingredients for the cornmeal mush. Cool until just warm.

I decided to document in pictures all the steps I use in making sourdough boules for future posters or even lurkers that might be wondering how does one go from a recipe to the actual loaf of bread. I am no expert having only been baking just under a year but I thought it would be fun to do.

It's been a while since my last baguette bake and I've always admired the beauties coming out of fellow TFL baker Alfanso's oven.

You can always tell what the current everyday bread is around here when the freezer is getting close to being empty. – like it is right now.  We didn’t make a bread last Friday and we have been giving away some of it the past two weeks too.

I watched British Bake-off with my daughter last night. It was Botanicals week, and the bread challenge was Fougasse. Not being one to turn down a challenge...

I find the flour here in the UK to be a bit of a challenge in itself, being used to Canadian bread flour. The dough was very, very sticky and took a long time to develop. I ended up with so much stuck to me and the bench, even after 10-12 minutes of slapping and folding, that there was barely enough left for the bread! Oh well, a challenge is meant to be challenging, after all.

Left to right a tag end of a pulla braid, some soft pull apart dinner rolls and in front NY style deli rye take three. I love the deli rye and this time I used barley malt syrup instead of brown sugar and used more onion and caramelized them down. This has made a wonderful sandwich bread.

On this rye bake, I brushed the excess flour from the banneton from the loaf with a soft brush and applied an egg wash to give the crust gloss. Perhaps my best take yet on Peter Reinhart's great recipe!

Thanks to all of you who offered advice after I lost my starter to mold after a long trip.  As I mentioned, the gluten-free starter was fine, so I stole some and built it up using ww, white and rye flours.  It really perked up quickly, and this is the first loaf I baked using it, a classic sourdough.  Thanks again to all for their suggestions.  I will try them all when I go on my next extended journey.  Best,  Phyllis

Hey! I'm back! I just had a HUGE culinary failure 2 months ago and since then I haven't baked or cooked anything until last week. My failure was so huge and heartbreaking that just talking about it makes me sad. I kept myself busy so I could move on but there are always reasons to celebrate so I made these gifts to give to some significant persons to me.