Blog posts

So I wanted to make cinnamon rolls. And I wanted to make sourdough dinner rolls. And I wanted to learn to paint bread. And I love baking, but I can't do it every day. Then inspiration hit, and I did it all at once. These have sugar in the filling, but just a touch and they aren't so sweet that I would call them a dessert. The raisins were soaked, so they are soft and yummy.

After bookmarking it more than a year ago, last weekend I finally got round to making Karin's Saatenbrot.  It turned out really good and was made extra special by the freshly ground bread spices which I roasted and ground up.  Not everyone in the family liked it, though.  They thought it too heavy and too strongly flavoured.

I'm having a good time baking my way through "Bread" by Jeffrey Hamelman. Here are three Hamelman formulas I tried recently.

It all started off with tasso, potato and egg breakfast burrito smothered in red sauce with cheese.

Then it took nearly the whole day to get dinner ready to go.

The rice looked god br=efire being cooked.  The pinto, purano & black bean refried looked fine before mashing.

A bit of catch up today on some Spring baking, starting with Irish soda bread for St. Patrick's day.  The recipe couldn't be easier (especially when compared to all the levain breads I play around with these days), and is a family favorite every St. Patrick's, and this recipe is one I picked up from Elise Bauer's great blog some years ago.  (I like the added raisins).

There's not a lot to say, really, but the picture doesn't show the whole story, so I suppose I'll have to explain.

What you see above is a new rendition of Hamelman's Challah recipe, altered a bit. There's milk where there should be water, and butter in place of oil, honey instead of sugar, and a small amount of whole wheat flour, just for a little somethin'.

It's not what makes this bread significant, though. Nor the weaving of four strands of dough together, which went well enough for not having done it for so long.

I put my new grain mill to work this weekend. The first thing I did was bake the teaching loaf in Reinhart's Whole Grain Breads book.  Note, the master formula is not error free. Under ingredients and method he states to use all of the soaker, and then states use all of the soaker (or biga) when he should have said starter (or biga).  See, I read these things, Peter!

There is a traditional type of test question in medicine called “visual diagnosis.” The student is shown a photo - it might be of a whole person, a face or just a piece of skin with a rash - and asked to make a diagnosis. The last time I took a test like that was for board certification in Pediatrics. That was in 1977, and I can still remember most of the photos I was shown - a young girl with an inguinal hernia, a teenage boy’s feet (They were flat.), a rash (Scabies), a child with a rare genetic condition (Progeria). I think there were a couple more.