Blog posts

Reading all the entries from the members baking the Japanese Sandwich loaf, I became very inspired and promptly set out to make my raisin water.  I had only a few raisens so I used dried cranberries and after a few days, I wasn't thrilled with the fermentation process.  I added a handful of grapes and wowie.......it took off and within a few days it was bubbling away. 

Yesterday I decided that it was time for my adventure into yeast water.  So with jar in hand, set out to make the levain to proof.

After reading Mebakes excellent post here with the suggestion using a finely ground sea salt, for easier dissolving on dough.  I decided to make a batch.  I should have done this a long time ago..what a great suggestion!  Thanks Mebake for the post!  

In my last croissant post(see here), I said I am practicing once or twice every week to perfect my lamination skill. It's been more than a month, and my croissant fever is getting hotter -- sadly, what's heating up faster is TX temperature. If you look up "mission impossible" or "self punishment" in the dictionary, you might see the following picture (28C is about 82F):

Continuing on my croissant project, to practice making croissants, this week I turned them into almond croissants.

 "my fifth time making croissants, getting more comfortable with them, but still more practices to do:)"

Almond croissant is my most favorite pastry item. It is buttery, crisp, moist, sweet and nutty, what is not to love in this little pasty of indulgence?

I made another loaf of my orange-raisin bread and refined my working recipe a bit, adding weights and some specifics on the marmalade step.

My working recipe is now as follows:

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Challah and I have a history.

When I was 15, I tried making my first bread. Having watched my mother (but never having helped her) since I was little, making bread (particularly oatmeal brown bread) from scratch, I figured it would be a snap. After all, I was able to pick up my mother's cookies and cake recipes with no problem, so what's so different about bread?

I was about to find out.

In honor of National Pretzel Day in the US (yesterday):

I came across this recipe in paper and thought it was worth a try, all the ingredients make this one a pocket full of flavour, which I am sure you will enjoy.

I try my best to explain where and why I deviated from the original recipe with bold and italic letters...

Una bella gita a Berlino ... e non potevano mancare alcuni dei migliori forni Berlinesi. Una grande città perfetta per i ciclisti come me, bici, bici, bici, segale, segale, segale ... tanti chilometri e lo zaino sempre colmo dell'inebriante profumo del pane di segale. Portare mattoncini nello zaino non è il massimo per girare in bici ma ne valeva la pena.

Recently Andy posted on his Pain Au Levain with Light Rye.   http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/23199/pain-au-levain-light-rye-flour  His formula was quite similar to something I had tried awhile ago http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/22372/sourdough-white-rye with a major difference: the percentage of fermented flour, which was more than double what I had used (33.3% rather than 16%).   I decided to try Andy's approach.  I followed his directions with the fo