Blog posts

Well, I went a little crazy with kitchen equipment over the past couple of weeks. I finally found myself a pizza stone (two actually), as well as proofing baskets, and a mixer! Yes i went crazy! And you have no idea how hard some of it was to find... I ended up getting the pizza stones while I was in Amsterdam on business! At an amazing kitchen store called Duikelman, if you ever visit Amsterdam and want to see a *really* nice kitchen goods store its worth the visit. Right alongside the museums and art galleries and other tourist attractions.

Yesterday i decided to make two batches of bread, one jewish rye style bread and also the standard SFBI WW sourdough. When preparing the rye bread I made a big mistake and used a formula that I had written down wich was way off the original formula. This one contained 75% prefermented flour, giving me a dough with absolutley no structure. However I managed to have it hold together using heavy flouring and S&F manouvres, the end result however was very flat but tasty rye bread.

Dan Lepard has hit a home run with these English muffins.  They're what I imagine English muffins should be and, in my opinion, they're about as good as it gets.  Mr. Lepard posted a link to his recipe in The Guardian newspaper article, which I have inserted below the photo. 

Anis Bouabsa baguettes with Sourdough

Anis Bouabsa baguettes with Sourdough Crumb 

KAF French Style Flour........500 gms

Water..............................370 gms

Starter.............................100 gms

The first thing I did was search the internet for breadbaking information (ok, so I did use a computer). There I learned about "real" breadbaking- the kind requiring a starter rather than yeast. A challenge! I was totally into that.

Hi,

I've newly discovered the concept of "crumb". I hope to be able to reliably create open crumb artisan breads (I think that's the right terminology). I'm at the beginning of this process. My current goal is to decide on a flour. I have two contenders, I prefer organically grown. I live in the Okanagan Valley in British Columbia. Seeing as Canada is a big wheat producer I want to find a Canadian flour. (I'm a US ex-pat, so I'm ridiculously attached to this country)

This being the second time I've baked bread, I decided to try my childhood favorite.

Anadama Bread (from www.anadamabread.com)

Ingredients

½ c. coarse cornmeal
2 T. butter
2 c. boiling water
1 tsp. salt
½ c. unsulphured blackstrap molasses
1 pkg. dried yeast
5 c. unbleached flour

Making it

For my first attempt at English muffins I decided to try Rose Levy Beranbaum's recipe from her Bread Bible.  The recipe uses a sponge/poolish and is an enriched (with butter and honey) dough.  I followed her recipe to the letter, except for diameter size.  After mixing I placed the dough in the fridge overnight for retardation.  She says it can stay in the fridge up to 24 hours.