Blog posts

Croissant with Sourdough Starter - TXFarmer VS. TX summer

Toast

In my last croissant post(see here), I said I am practicing once or twice every week to perfect my lamination skill. It's been more than a month, and my croissant fever is getting hotter -- sadly, what's heating up faster is TX temperature. If you look up "mission impossible" or "self punishment" in the dictionary, you might see the following picture (28C is about 82F):

 

Almond Croissant - naughty but nice, very nice

Toast

Continuing on my croissant project, to practice making croissants, this week I turned them into almond croissants.

 "my fifth time making croissants, getting more comfortable with them, but still more practices to do:)"

Almond croissant is my most favorite pastry item. It is buttery, crisp, moist, sweet and nutty, what is not to love in this little pasty of indulgence?

Orange Raisin Bread Revisited

Toast

I made another loaf of my orange-raisin bread and refined my working recipe a bit, adding weights and some specifics on the marmalade step.

My working recipe is now as follows:

====================================

Challah - Sort of

Toast

Challah and I have a history.

When I was 15, I tried making my first bread. Having watched my mother (but never having helped her) since I was little, making bread (particularly oatmeal brown bread) from scratch, I figured it would be a snap. After all, I was able to pick up my mother's cookies and cake recipes with no problem, so what's so different about bread?

I was about to find out.

Berlin

Toast

Una bella gita a Berlino ... e non potevano mancare alcuni dei migliori forni Berlinesi. Una grande città perfetta per i ciclisti come me, bici, bici, bici, segale, segale, segale ... tanti chilometri e lo zaino sempre colmo dell'inebriante profumo del pane di segale. Portare mattoncini nello zaino non è il massimo per girare in bici ma ne valeva la pena.

Andy's Pain Au Levain with Light Rye

Profile picture for user varda

Recently Andy posted on his Pain Au Levain with Light Rye.   http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/23199/pain-au-levain-light-rye-flour  His formula was quite similar to something I had tried awhile ago http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/22372/sourdough-white-rye with a major difference: the percentage of fermented flour, which was more than double what I had used (33.3% rather than 16%).   I decided to try Andy's approach.  I followed his directions with the fo

Wheat Germ Sourdough - simple and flavourful

Toast

 

I was amazed how wheat germs enhanced bread flavor when I made David (dmsnyder)'s famous SFBI miche a couple of months ago. I liked it a lot that I wanted to try making more breads with wheat germs.

Well, I can be easily distracted with other baking projects, bread ideas, new books, etc. Now, two months later, I finally got the chance to make a plain sourdough with toasted wheat germs added.