Blog posts

Here we are in Kansas City for a wedding.  My wife’s very best friend’s son is getting married.  He is the same age as our daughter.  It is very cold and raining here today after a cold but sunny day yesterday.  We hate cold of any kind and are not fond of having to live in it for a few days this weekend. We had to bring their pet tortoise; Sheldon, who is 25 years old, in from the cold of the back yard so he didn’t freeze because tortoises hate the cold even more than we do.  He will call his basement pen home till spring.

My all time favorite recipe - Sourdough Sugar Cookies! They are soft and fluffy and just so amazing. I hope you'll enjoy this recipe as well and give it a try. Truly worth the time! Thank you GeniusKitchen!! Recipe Here - Sourdough Sugar Cookies 

p.s. I highly recommend using Animal (Pork or Duck) Lard, Real (Grass Fed) Butter, or Coconut Oil as the fat. 

Hello again thefreshloaf community! I've done this a bit backwards, uploading my 1st bake on my second post. I was really excited about that five seed loaf! Anyways, this recipe came from Joshua Weissman on YouTube. His No Knead Beginner Sourdough Bread recipe was the least overwhelming for me. I even followed his schedule to help me out. From my results, I'd say it turned out great and was a huge success for my very first sourdough bake ever!

This is the first bake since returning from my business trip to Germany.  I had a nice trip, but unfortunately as usual I brought back the "Black Death" with me and it took me a good week to start feeling normal again, not to mention adjust to the East Coast time zone.

My wife has been dying to try making yogurt in the Instant Pot so after she finally made enough yogurt to feed a small army I decided to make use of some of it in a bread.

Hey thefreshloaf! It's my first ever post. I followed this recipe from Fat Sourdough on YouTube. It's my second time baking sourdough - I've been using my boyfriends un-bleached white starter which is a few months old now.  I'm very proud of how it came out! 

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0iEiMUinCF0

The dough:

Although the daytime temperature is still above 25°C in HK, hawkers selling roasted chestnuts and sweet potatoes are starting to show up on the roadside. Of course I cannot miss out the opportunity to them in bread.

Miso Caramelized Chestnuts Sourdough

Dough flour (all freshly milled):

120g      40%       Sprouted white wheat flour

After my first positive experience with baguettes last week, I wanted to give them another try (and we were out of bread…..gasp!!)  I decided I wanted to go with a 65% hydration dough this time to take any dough handling issues out of the process.  I also decided to just use a yeasted dough since I had a window to make bread, and didn’t have a leaven built up from my stored starter.  Here’s the formula I used (shooting for 3x 330g loaves): 

480g AP (80%)

120g Semolina (20%)

390g Water (65%)

3g ADY

12g salt 

In preparing for the 123 community bake on Saturday morning I hauled out my wooden dough board and gave it a brief scraping down.  My usual maintenance regime is a simple scrape after use, then an airing outdoors in the sun, weather permitting, followed by a light scrape prior to next using.  This time I decided apply science to the "light scrape" residue by dropping the bits (<2g) into a plastic container to which I added another <2g water, closed the lid and waited for the evening.  I then added 20 g each of water and flour, and&nbsp

Several years ago, a baking buddy asked me to help him with a German recipe.

The formula, published by a German bakers' association, combined rye meal and cracked wheat with mustard and cheese. The amounts, of course, were calculated for a commercial bakery, as were the sparse instructions. I had to downsize the formula to home baking proportions.