Blog posts

Me and My grand daughter EMILY aged 4  baking mini pizzas 2010

What fun we had and lunch to boot

I was always amused as an apprentice that in the award rates for bakers there was a category for single handed baker  i could just imagine some poor soul that had been in a loosing argument with the dough dividing machine. Of course it actually referred to a baker employed on wages working alone doing the whole kit and caboodle.   

I get a lot of books from publisher, most of which I don't post about, but I received one today that I really like. 

Does anyone have a really good yeasted rye sandwich bread recipe that they would be willing to share?

I have never been a big fan of pears. I eat only a few per year. But when I saw those I decided to buy a few. They were delicious. Their beauty inspired me to bake this bread.

Soaker:
453 g water

As you probably know, there's a technique for improving bread which involves adding some quantity of "old dough" to the new dough. Some dough from the last batch, that's 6 or 12 or 4 hours old, or something. While this is great for commercial bakers, it's a little bit less great for the home baker. Here's what I've started doing:

I baked this bread for the second time and made a couple of changes. Here is the ingredient list as printed.

Buttermilk White Bread
Recipe By: James Beard in Beard on Bread

• 2 packages active dry yeast
• 1 tablespoon granulated sugar
• 1/2 cup warm water (110 to 115, approximately)
• 4 cups unbleached hard-wheat flour
• 1 tablespoon salt
• 3 tablespoon melted butter
• 1 to 1 1/2 cup buttermilk

Changes I made were to use instant yeast and reduce the quantity to 1 tablespoon, next time I'll use even less.

Well, actually, I do love my new job. It's not as boring as the previous one and so much better than studying @ uni (at least my uni). But it has like two major drawbacks: firstly, we are not allowed to wear jeans in the office, and the second, which is really depressing - I have practically no time to bake bread!!!

This is baked from Hamelman's "BREAD", levain breads.

I knew that the radiant heat from a preheated stone will result in an unmatched ovenspring, so i played with my steaming technique a bit to accomodate the stones.

Here is a picture: