Blog posts

It seems that all that was required was to step back, breath deep, and allow time to create a little distance.  As I started to bake this again my wife asked "So, what are you baking?".  After I answered she asked "So, what are you going to do different?".  I said "I'm going to bake this like I never saw it before and see what happens."  She just smiled and left me to it.

A few days ago, my lovely stepdaughter, Cat, convinced me to join twitter. As if I didn't spend enough time already on my computer!

I don't know about you guys, but last week wore me out. I'm just now recovering and have the energy to recap :)

Here's the last week or so of production. The struan I kept, everything else went on Thursday.

Hi all.   Cruising around the various forums and recipes and I see an ingredient ' 1 bottle of soft butter'.    I live in northern Illinois USA and here we have butter in sticks, tubs and by the pound.   What is bottled butter and how much butter is in the bottle?   And where does one find this item?  And can melted & cooled butter be used in place of 'bottled butter'?  I'm 'fused here...   Thanks in advance to one and all!    Joey the Doeyo 

I have learned a lot about my oven this fall.  One of the most important things I learned, though, I just confirmed this weekend with this bake.  I have feared since I finished the insulation layer that my oven was too thin-walled to hold enough heat for multiple bakes.  I also suspected that perhaps I just was not "charging the heat battery" fully enough to make it last.  This weekend was a test of this theory.

I don't usually call it anything other than sourdough, but when I'm trying to be clever I call it SoF (State of Franklin) Sourdough. 

95% BF, 5% Whole Rye, 72% Hydration. 1/3 total flour(including all of the Rye) in 100% hydration levain.

The crust is softer than I'd like, but I'm hoping a new oven will fix that. 

Just a quick post - a basic wholemeal bread, lovely texture and mild sourdough flavour - that one is a keeper

As always, more photos and recipe on my blog here

Rudolph's antlers; Pepernoten versus kruidnoten

I didn’t have time to get creative this week so I flipped through Hamelman’s Bread and settled on the 40% rye with caraway seeds.  The only significant change I made was to leave out the yeast.  The rye sour (all of the rye flour is prefermented) raised the bread just fine on its own, it just took longer.