Blog posts

Another bake of BBA Basic Sourdough. Life interfered a bit on this one, had to drive to NY (from MD) to goto a party, then had a sports tournament the next day in PA. I had to let the preferment sit in the fridge for an extra day, and the autolysed flour also went into the fridge for a 24 hour period. After I mixed the dough I had intended a 36 hour ferment but I had some other priorities (... work ...) and it stayed in the fridge for 60 hours.

Those are two bakes from Andew Whitley's book (Bread Matters): Whole grain rye, and Spelt bread. I've used Wheat instead of Rye for the whole grain rye.

Hello to all from my modest digs here in Birdseye Indiana. You might ask,, "Where is Birdseye?" According to the locals, about half way between it's beak and it's a**.  I'm still adjusting to the move from living in Louisville KY for over 30 years and finding myself in a very rural, very isolated but very beautiful spot.

I've had varying success with the crumb on a number of loaves.  I think this is one of my best efforts so far, but far from perfect as I compare to other wonderful bread posts I see on this site.   Interested in opinions on this.  Thanks.  Phyllis

I am in the middle of making a triple batch of hard rolls. The dough is bulk proofing right now. I would like to top some of the rolls with sesame, sunflower , and poppy seeds. I have tried pressing them in after forming the rolls and they still seem to fall mostly off after being handled.

Having recently ventured back in to bread making, I found myself making some pretty poorly shaped and generally poorly executed loaves. I decided the best way forward was to start from scratch.

This is the country loaf that I mixed up yesterday and baked off today.

My wife requested some of these tasty rolls  at the last-minute for our belated holiday family dinner this past weekend.  She wanted something to go along with her eggplant parmesan and lasagna and these really went well.

Since I didn't have a lot of time to make these with yeast water or sourdough starter I used some instant yeast but to try to build some extra flavor I retarded the dough overnight in the refrigerator.

My first blog post here.  :)

This loaf is a modification of the Tartine bakery formula and method.  I wish I could figure out a way to prevent solids added to the dough from popping out after shaping.  The cherries on the surface charred a bit much but the rest of the bread is so nice that I can overlook that fault.  Lovely untoasted with butter.

Cherry and Chocolate Sourdough Boule 

Formula:

100 g. leaven

375 g. water

500 g. unbleached organic white flour

10 g. sea salt

This is one of my all-time favorites.  I love the Classic sourdough baked in the LaCloche.  The crust usually comes out very well, and no tray with water is needed in the bottom of the oven. I bought a Bordelaise scorer online for about $12, and it really helps with the scoring.  Recently, I have used primarily white sourdough starter, but I have added a touch of whole wheat and rye starter, which give the bread a bit of a different taste.  It's fun to experiment.