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One of my earliest food memories is of eating a delicious, buttery Naan, al fresco on the patio, somewhere in an outdoor cafe in an Indian city, probably Mahabaleshwar or one of the stops on the way there from Pune, when I was just 8 years old. I can still taste it today. My senses were enchanted by this unexpected delight, both familiar and yet different to the breads of my American youth.

We are off to a BBQ tonight so decided to try out making Fougasse.

I used Paul Hollywood's recipe but made totally by hand.

500 g strong flour

10 g fine salt

7 g instant yeast

 Mix in large bowl and add 350 g tepid water and 2 tbspn olive oil.

Mixed by hand, added 1.5 tspn each finely chopped thyme, sage and Rosemary (on light side as hubby not so keen on rosemary in particular)  then did a lot of slap and folds/ stretch and fold and did get a window pane (with SD I don't usually bother).

Added a full diced jalapeno to this mix along with about 1/4 cup of canned corn kernels. Sorry no fresh corn to roast her at this time of year. I will double both the corn and pepper next bake. The additions make a delicious bread!

Happy baking! Ski

Lucy really went to work this week to come up with a bread that would fit the Oriental Pullman pan perfectly – with the lid on!  A more complex kind of bread so she didn’t specify sprouting the whole grains so we got off a bit easy this week.  Every time I turned around she was pulling put another grain, seed or nut long hidden away that pantry she guards with her life.

My basic wheat flour starter (known affectionately as Golfedan) has been doing some nice work recently and I guess it's finally decent enough to share here. I just baked these two today. I started off with a poolish to which I added everything else the next day. Here's the breakdown.

Poolish:

50g starter + 175g water + 175g bread flour (to create a basic 200-200 poolish)

I let that sit at room temperature for about 13-14 hours until it was quite bubbly on top and able to float.

Dough:

 Hello everyone on TFL.. Today I'm very happy and proud of my brother Adam, he asked me last week if I could show him how to make a loaf of bread start to finish on his day off (being today ) . I jumped at the occasion that my brother wanted me to teach him something so beautiful in its self the patience of bread baking... We made a Tartine "Country Loaf" from the book "Tartine Bread" . I walked him through the steps and he was very excited at the progress of the dough.

If you have never made a bread with cream cheese yet, I urge you to give it a try.  The cream cheese really turns out a moist and creamy crumb.

The addition to the smashed potatoes with the durum and Kamut flours resulted in a moist, flavorful bread with a moderately open crumb.  This one is perfect for grilled bread, panninis, and simply with some olive oil or butter.