Blog posts

This weekend we decided to bake a bunch of bread to give to the neighbors for Christmas.  We decided to warm up the wood fire oven Sat night.  SInce it is cooler we tend to fire it the day before and cook meat or something then bread the next day after the oven has been refired.  So last night we cooked a pork loin.  We have had good luck with birds (chickens or turkeys) but not with beef.  So we thought we would try pork this time.  It did not brown as nicely as I would have liked but it tasted wonderful.  So we baked that last night.  Then this morn

For those who are keeping score, I moved from the USA to South Africa in late October to work on a project being managed by my employer.  After spending a week in a hotel and a month in a temporary apartment, my wife and I moved into a leased house on December 1.  We're feeling fairly settled now and can find our way to several different supermarkets, gas stations, restaurants and the like.  It's a different landscape, and I'm not just talking topography.  Still, we're learning to navigate our way around without creating unnecessary hazard to ourselves or others.

I baked the buckwheat batard from Leader's Local Breads yesterday.  This is my third or fourth attempt at this bread, and by far the most sucessful.  The first time I tried this bread I was unaware of the errors in the formula (if you do a search of the site you will find posts on the errors of this book) and ended up experimenting just trying to get a buckwheat starter that I could work with.  The flavor is so unique that I did not give up and have come up with a formula that works for me.  For the buckwheat levain I used 75 grams of my liquid levain that is approximate

There are a lot of possibilities with a basic sourdough loaf. When you have established an almost consistent basic "Pain au Levain" dough you can enrich it with everything you like.

Not a bread post - but I'm going to post my girl's birthday cake here anyway, cause you know...I do it every year.

This year my daughter requested "kittens playing with yarn" on her cake. She's fond of marzipan so I decided to do some sculpting with the sweet almond paste as a cake topper.

When I saw Shiao-Ping's post of Chocolate Sourdough, I knew I had to try it. Her beautiful images drew me into the project and made me drool for a rich dark decadent desert bread. I thought it might pair with cranberry's well and tried a couple different liquors to soak them for extra flavor. I had some great morning oatmeal for a couple days but in the end I decided to let the cranberry's be cranberry's.

Merry Christmas and Happy Channukah,

In my first post to this addictively delicious site, may I ask folks out there for recipes for sufganiyot, or yeasted doughnuts, typically served on Channukah?  I would especially appreciate recipes that do not contain dairy products.  If anybody has a sourdough version that you like, I would love to try it.  Come on guys, we have 8 days so let the games begin...

NOTE: This post is superseded by http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/16314/goat-milk-sourdough-final-word