Blog posts

Last week, my wife's cousins from Styria, in eastern Austria, came to stay with us and brought us some dark green pumpkinseed oil, which is a regional specialty. They also brought a recipe for a chiffon cake made with the oil. The recipe couldn't be simpler (and it's also an amazing taste when accompanied by a good beer):

1. Grease and flour a bundt or gugelhupf pan and sprinkle the bottom with toasted pumpkinseeds.

    I only recently delved into the world of bread, and before I overwhelm myself with the plethora of recipes I am going to hone in on the basics with 2 recipes. I have been reading Peter Reinhart's The Bread Baker's Apprentice and obtaining the "feel" for the dough is my end goal. Instead of relying on timers, I want to depend on my senses.

This is an illustration i made of shaping a Sandwich loaf, that i wanted to share with you all.

Khalid

I finally dug my starter out and brought it up to smelling good and looking strong.  So now, it was time to bake a few loaves...though I'd rather be making pizza's.  

It has been a while since I've turned my oven on.  Now the weather has cooled a little, it was nice to turn on the oven and not have the kitchen feeling to warm.  I would even make a pie today.    

This bread originally started out to be baguettes along the line of the one Ian (isand66) baked this last week only with the addition of SD to his YW only levain.

Sending this to Yeastspotting.

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Alnwick Food Festival

22nd and 23rd September 2012

I spent much of last week baking and preparing myself for the challenges and opportunities opening up from this local food festival, now in its 8th year; http://www.alnwickfoodfestival.co.uk

I have been wanting to try the Tangzhong method for a while when I want soft, fluffy bread. I also was very impressed with txfarmer's demonstrations of kneading technique to get soft and fluffy (and everything else she does!). I finally got around to it. I made up the Tangzhong yesterday and put in fridge overnight. There are good videos of this process on youtube, but it is easy. Just 5 parts water, 1 part flour (by weight) and medium heat, stirring till it thickens (149 degrees F).

Note: I had posted this on TFL's forum (Photos & Photography). However, I'm posting it again as a blog entry in case there are those of you who might be interested but missed my post.

This is my third take on Peter Reinhart’s Multigrain Struan from his excellent book” “Whole grain breads”. My first two bakes were on stone, but this one is in a Pan. I have made few changes:

1 – Doubled the recipe to fit two Pans: 1kg, and 700 gr. (The loaf shown is the 1 Kg)

2 – Used only white sourdough starter for the Biga.

2 – Added 113g White Bread flour to the final dough, not whole Wheat flour.