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My daughter has a sorority sister in from CA staying with us this weekend and I wanted to make something she and my daughter  probably have never been fortunate to taste before.  This weeks ITJB bake is Babka so I thought I would give it a try - with a few twists and not just twisting the dough - which I also did.  This babka leans Polish but besides being leavened with minneola / apple yeast water,  in place of a coiled loaf - I used a Bundt pan.  In place of cake crumbs, I used a almond, vanilla, granola streusel.

Hello and Happy St. Patrick’s Day everyone!

Breakfast was a real treat today...what a pleasure to discover Irish Soda Bread :^)

Bread from my wood-fired brick oven, made 15th/16th March 2012

A few weeks ago I found an excellent sourdough website created by Teresa Greenway and saved a few recipes to add to my future bake list.  I finally decided to give one a try and baked her recipe for an Alaskan Sourdough bread.  This bread is slightly sweet similar to a shepherder's bread.  The overall bread is 67% hydration and uses some interesting ingredients like evaporated milk.

After practicing daily with my six-string braiding crutch

Today I built and baked a six-strand challah

Nailed the braiding, but I hadn't expected (hadn't thought it through) how big this loaf would turn out: it's resting on a 17" drying rack.

I thought I would share a few pics from last night's pizza dinner. I used Nancy Silverton's pizza dough recipe from her Mozza book. I made a few adjustments with fermentation times, but for the most part, it's the same.

I've had the pizza at Mozza and I think it's one of the best (if not, the best) pizza in Los Angeles. This recipe is not supposed to be an exact duplicate of the pizza dough at Mozza, but rather, a home baker's version. I think it came out pretty darn good, if I do say so myslef!

http://www.wildyeastblog.com/2008/08/25/cranberry-oat-sourdough-scones/

Made these quick and delicious scones using pantry ingrediants so made some changes:

Used KAF WWW for all flours, including oat

Added 0.5C walnut chips

Used frozen and thawed sourdough starter 

Used 0.13tsp of KAF Fiori di Sicilia instead of the lemon zest

My daughter gave me her old Nikon and I figured out how to use it today. It has a photo setting called 'Food' that lets you take do some kind of macro. It also has a close up setting too. 12 MP, wide angle and image stabilization with a decent auto focus. Very cool.

I haven't baked anything but some of my personal "comfort food" breads for the past few weeks. These are just good almost any way - plain, with butter, toasted with almond butter and apricot preserves, French toast, as garlic bread, for panini ....

Hamelman's Pain au Levain

Sending this to Yeastspotting.

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