Blog posts

It's been close to 3 months since my last post and I hope all TFLoafers are doing fine. While the sales of my baking business have improved a fair bit....and as the saying goes....you win some...you lose some. 

Hey, 

Sorry for not posting yesterday. My back went out, as it often does, so I spent the day in bed. The raisins swelled with water a few hours into Day 1 and remained at the bottom of the jar. There was no change on Day 2.

Day 3

The swollen raisins (see above) are starting to separate from each other. Opened the jar and there's no change in the smell. Just smells like raisins. There were a few floaters and bubbles though. (below)

I am celebrating St Patric's Day with a beer bread - not Guinness, but close enough

Its a slow prove bread with a lot of oven spring - hoping the taste is great too - will slice it open tonight

Full recipe on my blog here - http://messybaker.blogspot.co.uk/2016/03/pale-ale-sourdough.html 

Adding whole grunkorn grains (the unripe version of spelt) to a simple whole spelt sandwich loaf makes for a very interestingly flavoured bread. 

Although this bread is delicious I do need to work on the crumb a little, its not quite up to TFLers standards, but never the less an enjoyabe and healthy loaf.

see www.mybreadandbrot.com for details.  

Simple sourdough with a little spelt.  Happens when you run a little short on the whole wheat flour. Nice loaf though.

My usual starter lives on the counter top and is fed every morning a 1:2:2:4 ratio of starter, bread flour, whole wheat flour and water. The temperature in the kitchen is a stubborn 66-70F in the daytime and dips quite a bit at night so the starter lives on one feed a day for most of the week with 2 feeds per day in the run up to bake day. I've been managing my starter like this for about a year (with additional feeding in hot weather), it leavens bread just fine so I've had no reason to complain.

We haven’t made any pizza for a while around her for some reason.  It isn’t like we don’t like pizza but it is pretty messy when it comes right down to it – at least it is when Lucy and I make it at any rate!  Flour, semolina, corn meal everywhere, frying the Sausage, chopping all the toppings…..Yep I’m guilty and Lucy looks guilty.

These are two Tartine-style country loaves. 

Used the same formula as I have before, found here http://www.theperfectloaf.com/best-sourdough-recipe/

I just received my order from KAF the other day and wanted to use the barley flour I had ordered.  I love the nutty flavor barley flour provides so why not up the nutty flavor a few notches and add some walnuts and pecans?

I used some French style flour from KAF as well as the barley flour for main dough and used some sprouted rye flour I milled myself, along with more French style flour for the starter.

I received Artisan Bread  in Five Minutes a Day from a friend as a thank you and decided to give it a shot with the European Peasant Loaf. I was very pleasantly surprised at the results. I followed the outlined method pretty closely aside from throwing in a tablespoon of sourdough starter in addition to the yeast (1tbsp) and baking it in a dutch oven rather than on a stone with steam.