Blog posts

It's still easy to cut yourself while slicing bread. Yesterday, when halving one of my Pane a l'Ancienne from TBBA, I put my hand on top of the loaf, and sliced along the side, like I always do. It removes the possibility of getting the knife in the palm of my hand. Instead, the knife skipped on the (beautiful) crust and right into the pad of my middle finger. I managed to keep the blood off the bread! :) And boy, was there a lot of blood. I served it at a friend's party, and it was the talk of the room. Nothing trumps fresh bread! -Joe

I started out on Saturday morning creating a fresh starter using 75% water to flour. I moved on to a lunch loaf and a couple of baguettes.

Today is Saturday, a bread baking day: I've made a batch of Low Fat Bran Muffins with apples, raisins, oat bran and All Bran cereal and later today I will be making a whole wheat recipe as a tester for author, Peter Reinhart. Perhaps I will start Floyd's Pain Sur Poolish later today and finish it up tomorrow. So many breads....so little time. Recently I received a copy of Elizabeth David's English Bread and Yeast Cookery. This is a book that I have wanted for a long time, but it may now be out of print.

Just to update my blog, I recently made 2 kinds of breads. First was a barley stout bread (malt syrup, rye, wheat, barley grains and ...Stout! :) ). Nice aroma with a slightly taste.

I've been gobbling up The Handmade Loaf. Great book. A pity it is so hard to find in the states. I'm too tired to post any recipes or articles tonight, though I will again soon. I'm long overdue. For now, a roll call of things I baked this weekend: Cinnamon Buns - an amalgam of recipes. Flax Seed Bread - from Dan Lepard's book. He calls it Linseed Wheat Bread, I believe. So good I made a second batch.

In the summer I live in the Chicago area but I spend seven months of the year in Fort Myers, FL. Down here I greatly miss the great Asiago bread made by Panera (formerly St Louis bread company.) Nobody makes it in this area, so I thought I would give it a try. I was sort of on my own, because I couldn't find a recipe. I chopped up 2 1/2 oz. of the cheese in a mini blender. I used three cups of flour and followed exactly Floyd's lesson number five for making french bread. I used 1/2 tsp. of dry yeast (bulk from Costco which I keep in the freezer) in the starter and 1/2 tsp.

So last night I was thinking to myself, "I'd like to make some sourdough this weekend. Tomorrow morning I'll take out some of my ripe chef and make a starter with it. It can activate while I'm at work." This morning, I went into the fridge, grabbed my tub of chef. Grabbed the scale and a spatula, took out the stone ground rye. Then I walked over to the garbage can and dumped half of the chef. Then I stared at the chef I had just discarded. *sigh* Stupid auto-pilot. -Joe

My 2nd attempt at a 100% sourdough rye bread. :)Finally turned out better!! Made with wholemeal rye and chopped rye grains. Aromatic and sour.. Would increase the hydration next time to obtain a more open crumb...if possible.

I was searching for some information relating to my bakers course when I stumbled upon the Bread and Breadmaking book. I could only find it available on the Internet Archive.

It has been a very busy month. Work, class, guests, birthdays, etc. I've baked fairly regularly, but I haven't had time to take pictures, post recipes here, or experiment. Today I used my sourdough starter. I've been feeding it once a week, but I hadn't baked with it in a while. I just made some little buns: They weren't bad. I served them with a pot of homemade split pea soup. The real star of the meal were the homemade croutons.