Blog posts

Hi all,

My baking this weekend was good, but not novel.  I baked more of Sylvia's sandwich buns to have with Bulgogi.  Still I feel like I should contribute a blog post this week.  So, here's one of the many excellent recipes using stale bread (a plentiful commodity in our household).  "Panzanella" (which I believe means "Nell's trousers" in Italian) is a Florentine salad, according to Wikipedia.  

Inspired by the recent blogs about Pane di Altamura by Franko

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/24102/pane-di-altamuramy-ongoing-project

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/24172/first-success-altamura-project

and David Snyder

I've managed to fit in a mid-week bake, its actually much easier than you might think.

Decided make up a Pear Cider Bread, figuring that the extra sugars make the fermentation a bit easier. Mixed everything up as soon as I got home from work, stetch and fold a few times and leave to bulk ferment for a few hours. Shape before going to bed and bake first thing in the morning. It takes me an hour to get ready for work, and only 40 minutes to bake a loaf of bread - perfect!!

These are a couple of the bakes from my ongoing attempt at combining methods from Whole Grain Breads and Tartine Bread into a simple, mostly whole wheat sourdough.  The bread is turning out pretty well - crackled crust, soft, springy crumb, lovely flavor.  It's amazing what even 15% white flour will do for the texture of a whole wheat bread.  The hardest part is just making up my mind about the details!