Blog posts

It has been a while since I posted, although I have been baking regularly.  For New Years I made a few breads and thought I would add my voice to those who have had wonderful success with David's posting of the SFBI Miche on TFL.  When I first started baking sourdough breads I was totally intrigued by the photo of a large miche on the cover of Reinhart's Bread Bakers Apprentice.  I spent months trying to master it, with only moderate success.  But an attraction to the miche loaf has stayed with me, and I real

Two formulas I've not tried before.

Renato Bosco Panettone

Renato Bosco maintains his madre in water which means it's less acidic and hence why his formula includes it at 50% in the first dough.

Last week, I went to a health food store in Dubai to pick up some Rye berries, and black strap molasses. To my dismay, I could not find any malt syrup in the store, and left to a shopping mall for lunch. Located next to the food court was yet another health store that quickly caught my sight. I went in, and asked for barley malt syrup, and the salesperson said that they do not sell it anymore. I was just on my way out  when I  heard him calling upon me and saying: Wait, I have some barley extract!

Hello Everyone, 

I baked brioches today using Tartine's recipe but used half the ingredients. This is what I ended up with. The final result tasted good, but the holes were small.

Please let me know what went wrong here.

Thank you.

After last year’s total and complete fiasco using origami panettone moulds made out of parchment paper where the panettone fell out of the mould onto the floor while cooling upside down, we decided to bake it in a large soufflé pan this year.

We used Susan’s Wild Yeast formula found here: http://www.wildyeastblog.com/2007/12/07/panettone/ 

The lead in photo is Barb's first ever homemade tamales... She and Helen both made tamales for the first time... and they both made pork... She did a marvelous job meandering outside of her comfort zone.

Helen made her's with her daughters and granddaughter, thus starting a new family tradition... They made about 90 or so of these ...

 Nice looking tamales here too... fun times!!

Recently, I'm reading Chad Robertson's Tartine Bread before sleep. His concept and method in bread baking are unique. I tried the Tartine Country loaf before reading his book, while I decide to try it again sticking to his procedure. 

Here's the recipe(I can't get good whole wheat flour here, so I replace it with whole rye flour).

1.Make the leaven. I fed my starter(4g) with 25g bread flour, 25g whole rye flour, 50g water. At 26C, it takes about five hours to pass the floating test.

As the weather has turned cooler, my sourdough breads have become less tasty. They have  had a less complex flavor and have been less tangy than those baked last Summer. My kitchen is in the mid-60's of late, while it was in the high-70's (or low-80's)  in the heat of summer. So, in the interest of science and other noble causes, I set out to return my SFSD to its rightful tastiness.