Blog posts

You know you've got the baking bug bad when you find yourself making a sponge on a Saturday night not even sure what you'd want to bake the next day, just figuring it is a good idea to have one ready. I think I may try a ciabatta again, but who knows? Still, I'm glad to have my poolish handy.

Yesterday i tried making croissants for the 2nd time. The first time wasn't tht good becoz the butter burst through the dough and i just threw part of the dough and simply made some badly/oddly shaped croissants. So yesterday, i rolled out the dough and thought mebbe if i use pieces instead of a block, the results will be better. Instead, the pieces were too frozen and it pierced right through the dough!.. :S... I got frustrated and kneaded the pieces in the dough and roughly crushed it while i kneaded it. Then i quickly threw it in the freezer.

I forgot to mention that I baked kaiser rolls again yesterday. They were mighty tasty, though they still don't look like professional kaiser rolls. I actually like the rough look of them though. Anyone have any kaiser shaping tips?

I tried making the poolish ciabatta from the Hamelman bread book today. I was not paying much attention when I added everything to the mixer and I must have added too much flour or too little water, so it was clear it was not going to be a ciabatta after all. So a french bread loaf it turned out to be. One thing I did do was focus more on the scoring.

I finally bought Jeffrey Hamelman's Bread book the other day. I baked the poolish baguettes from it today and following his instructions on mixing, shaping, scoring, and baking. It was largely successful, though I made a few mistakes. The dough seemed pretty sticky, but Hamelman is correct that folding the dough during rising tightens things up nicely.

Back to work tomorrow. During my week off I managed to bake pain de Provence, bagels, chocolate chip banana bread, kaiser rolls (recipe to come, after I try it a few more times), pain sur poolish, and an apple pie. Not bad consider everything else we did (3 days at the beach, a day hiking, lots of visits to the local playgrounds, and so on).

I've been on vacation this week. Of course I have to be a bakery tourist. I came across Bread & Ocean in Manzanita, Oregon (see map). A nice little place, that makes some interesting sounding breads: fig-walnut bread, potato-rosemary leek bread, spelt bread, german seeded bread, as well as the standard french bagettes and sourdoughs. I tried one of their sweets, an almond-poppy seed bun.

Well since asking the question about what kind of adjustments are to be made at high altitude I have been researching on the web quite a bit. It is very perplexing, contradictory and fustrating. It is said that 37 states have cities that are over 3000ft. yet there are only a handful of books devoted to the subject.